EUKN - United Kingdom - Segmentation of employers on the basis of their training behaviour (Research report RR807)

Segmentation of employers on the basis of their training behaviour (Research report RR807)

Introduction

The report assessed the employer population in England, its willingness to train, and the nature and extent of that training. It compared the characteristics of trainers and non-trainers and summarised some of the major differences that separate them.

Description

This report described the results of a segmentation analysis of employers according to their training behaviour, using data from the National Employer Skills Survey (NESS) 2005.

NESS produced a large amount of data about employers’ skill needs and training practices from a quantative sample of over 74,500 employers in England (and information on expenditure on training from a sub-sample of 7000 of the employers).

Cluster analysis was used to produce groupings of employers with similar characteristics to help in the design of policies for encouraging employers to invest in skills to meet their business needs.

Background information

EKOS was commissioned by Department for Education and Skills to produce a segmentation of employers based on data collected in the National Employer Skills Survey (NESS) 2005, in terms of employer propensity to train, and the nature and extent of that training.

The research was commissioned with the intention that it should inform considerations of how well the needs of different types of employers might be met by current policies and to inform directions for future policy development.

Methodology

NESS 2005 was a telephone interview survey with some 74,500 establishments in England. Employers were asked a series of detailed questions about the training they had undertaken in the last 12 months, as well as about skill shortages and skills gaps in the existing workforce.

A subset of just over 7000 of the main sample were re-interviewed to collect itemised details on expenditure on training in the last 12 months.

Two segmentation analyses were performed:

one on establishments that had provided training to some of their workforce in the last 12 months (“Trainers”);
and one on establishments that had not provided training (“Non-trainers”). Includes an appendix detailing the statistical method used.

Conclusions

The report concluded that trainers were much more likely than non-trainers to identify skills gaps in their workforces, experience skills shortage vacancies, and to recruit young people direct from education.

Trainers also tended to be more sophisticated in terms of having business plans. The most common reason for not training amongst all the four non-trainer clusters was that all staff were already fully proficient. However, one cluster also had higher proportions of employers citing practical barriers to training.

Contact info

Department for Education and Skills
Phone: +44 870 000 2288
info@dfes.gsi.gov.uk

Publication date

Project finished

30/11/2006

Researcher

EKOS Consulting

Article info
ISBN: 9781844788392

Links

Visit the Department for Education and Skills website

Download the "Segmentation employers basis" report (PDF, Eng, 391 KB)

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Economy knowledge & employment

Keywords

Training