Motivating employers to invest in the skills of their employees has become exceptionally challenged during the COVID crisis when often the priority was given to actions aiming at the survival of the companies and not necessarily to taking up employee training programs. Nevertheless, in some cases, it is exactly the learning programmes that helped companies to endure in our current times of change and uncertainty. In the following blog, some experiences with regards to company training programs will be presented that are based on interviews with experts working on implementing workplace-oriented learning programs in collaboration with employers.

New challenges with roots in the past

Engaging workplaces and promoting learning programs, especially with regards to adult basic skills programmes, has never been the easiest tasks to do for anyone wishing to convince CEOs, HR leaders and employers to invest in their employees’ skills. In the EU raising the level of participation in lifelong and adult learning programs was a challenge even before the pandemics.[1] Nevertheless, the latest results from the EU Labour Force Survey (LFS) show that

in 2018 the participation rate in the EU stood at 11.1 %, 0.2 percentage points above the rate for 2017 and the rate has increased gradually since 2015, when it was 10.7 %.^[2]

In times of crisis, however, engaging in learning activities can be a challenge and imply a lack in revenue, which is why many employers think twice before they invest in employee training during COVID. Although this may seem like a general condition, there are trades and sectors that were more affected by the crisis than others. In tourism, the pandemic has reduced activity by 80% and without urgent action 6 million jobs are at risk, which has certain consequences to the efficiency of outreach activities of training providers too.[3]

Do conventional promotion techniques work?

One of the first aspects worth considering is the initial contact making when it comes to communicating with employers. SMEs[4] reported a great amount of additional administrative and management related tasks, which makes conventional „sales & marketing” techniques e.g., cold calls less effective and, in many cases, a bit of a nuisance for them too. Even before the pandemics, managers of SMEs received numerous invitations that they could or would not respond to, which may indicate the lack of time, but also a considerable lack of trust towards learning offers that reach them this way. Engaging SMEs to invest in employee training is especially challenged, if the decision-makers in enterprises do not see how the training program responds to the actual needs of their company, which sounds almost as a common sense, but it has important implications to outreach strategies.

Responding to actual needs

Another important thing to consider while planning initial contact with SMEs, is that their conditions significantly changed during the past two years. As many companies are struggling to survive our turbulent times, both human and financial capacities are organised with special care by the management. Dedicating working hours for training can imply a lack in revenue for the employer, while from the employees’ perspectives, staying extra hours after work for learning is also a challenge. Even though employee training programs can significantly increase efficiency, it is rather difficult to make this point to managers, if they do not see precisely how the training program is designed to reach this goal. In tourism, the negative consequences of staying away from work for training is even more detectable as their chances to operate depends largely on central regulations e.g., lockdowns and other limitations. While most of the SMEs in tourism wish to dedicate their employees’ time on meaningful activities, it is very hard to commit to any training scheme when their operation is so unpredictable relying mostly on the government’s crisis management.

Unpredictability also has a significant impact on internal decision-making mechanisms in companies, which implies further challenges to training providers when designing their training offers to the needs of their clients. While before COVID-19 employers could make an easier decision based on careful consideration of their capacities, it is now extremely difficult to see what resources they can commit to learning, and which they should hold on to for a better use.

Successful workplace learning programs generally have an effect not only on the skills of the employees, but also the organisational culture of the whole company. To address company needs with an individual design, one must understand the internal mechanisms (i.e., „ways we do around here”), that can touch on ’sensitive’ themes among employees and between the management and the employees too. Communication, especially during COVID, is often challenging and constitutes an important subject in workplace trainings as misunderstandings can lead to inefficient work management and task completion that both hit SMEs with smaller-scale production more evidently.

To sum up, training providers come to realise that the challenge of engaging workplaces to invest in training programs is a rather complex one, having roots in the long-experienced obstacles (e.g., lack of trust in general or one-size-fits-all solutions, overburdened company management) in the field of workplace training, while meeting new difficulties posed by our current crisis. One may wonder what strategies could help SME managers commit to workplace learning programs and how trainers can make the benefits of training explicitly clear for the company leadership?

Strategies that could work

In the next section, there is a list of considerations that could help in engaging SME leaders to start or continue investing in employee training programs.

Build trust with personalised outreach

• Training providers may consider using more channels while making initial contact to the leadership. A single-channel communication may prove rather inefficient in contacting the management today when companies are approached with a great number of different promotional content.
• The initial contact is a key to the successful engagement. It is a good idea to find a personal contact person to the company who can introduce training providers to the decision-maker at the SME. The numerous marketing messages, coupled with potential negative experiences from the past may result in ignorance or a complete lack of trust toward training in general. An efficient way to gain back the trust could be to approach leaders through the recommendation of a contact person who is credible to the managers. Hence, professional communities, chambers of commerce etc. could be important platforms for networking.
• Cold calls, generic email promotion are tools that seem to fail to reach the managers during COVID and a lot depends on how well can training providers explain the benefits of the learning programs to the decision-makers at the company. Successful agreements tend to follow up a personal meeting with the managers where there is time for discussion to establish trust and a common vision. It can also be an important event for learning about the company’s challenges which then can provide trainers with input for designing a need-based offer for SMEs.

Focus on company needs

• Time and efficient allocation of resources are of the essence to SMEs today when their survival depend greatly on how they manage their work and their employees. It is vital to make sure that SMEs get what they need through the training. Programs setting the company needs into the centre of their design can be an attractive offer to leaders today.
• It is essential to learn about and understand the real challenges and conditions companies (and the given sector) face. In many cases this process can be designed as a shared endeavour where leaders join the preparations and take an active part in unearthing the obstacles that lead to miscommunication and inefficient work. Problems can in many cases be tacit or hidden. This can result in mutual understanding and growing trust internally among company employees which can then contribute to raised awareness.
• A learning design that contributes to the development of a clearer organisational culture should account not only for trade skills, but there should also be a strong focus on so-called ‘workplace skills’ that imply necessary social and soft competences allowing employees to integrate well in the culture of the organisation, with other colleagues. In several cases the reason for inefficiency or even resignation of colleagues with excellent trade-related professional skills lies with basic skills or workplace skills needs. It is important to make the point that workplace learning can address both skillsets resulting in improving quality and integration.
• Finally, it also has a promotional value to offer highly customised training schemes to companies focusing on actual needs. Competition is an important factor on the labour market and trainers building on specific needs of companies are in fact providing programs that elicit the potentials of a given organisation. In this sense they are conducting a premium service to their clients as no companies are approached with the very same learning offer. This may provoke the interest of managers who can then, with good reason, expect certain advantages or edge on the market.

Offer co-financing schemes

• Evidently, finances are the central factor when it comes to SMEs who can be especially vulnerable to the risks posed by the pandemics. Unfortunately, the fact that active labour market policies in many countries that provide subsidised training schemes come with minimum or no expenditure on the companies’ side does not automatically mean that companies would join such programs without consideration. Nevertheless, without looking for different governmental or EU-subsidised programs and flexible co-financing schemes, chances for reaching an agreement with managers seem to be faint.

Contributing experts

Gábor Bay - Head of LearnDigital
LearnDigital Ltd. has been operating since 2004 and has been developing e-learning and digital learning resources since 2018. Our services and developments focus on promoting digital learning and developing the digital competencies of Hungarian citizens.

Zsolt Vincze – Managing director at Progress Consult Ltd.
Zsolt is the coordinator of Progress’ company training branch having daily contact directly to company leaders, HR heads and CEOs. Progress Consult is contributing to the implementation of an innovative workplace learning methodology called the GO model.

Links to relevant resources

• More work skills related content on EPALE

• EBSN’s OER on EPALE on Workplace Basic Skills: Policy and Practice

• More information on the GO-Model in the OER

• Read about the EU SME Strategy for a sustainable and digital Europe

• EU Labour Force Survey

• European Commission. (2015). Adult Education and Training in European – Widening access to training opportunities (Eurydice report). URL: https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/national-policies/eurydice/content/adult-education-and-training-europe-widening-access-learning-opportunities_en