Training Industry Trends in the Current Economy

Officially, the unemployment rate as of December 2009 was hovering around 10%. In reality, it’s closer to 20%. At Training Intelligence, we’ve seen IT workers and end-users alike let go by their companies as they streamline, outsource, and make do with less in general.



The reality is that we are in a jobless recovery, and those jobs may never come back. The companies that are going to prosper in the next decade are those that are able to make this jobless recovery work in their favor, those that don’t will fail. Many top companies have contracted us to come up with training solutions that allow existing working to become more efficient at their jobs, doing the work of two or three employees without working additional hours. How? By leveraging technologies... most of the time, technology the company has already invested in! You’d be surprised at how many technologies are either not utilized at all or are severely underutilized. It isn’t always complex systems like the SAP training we’ve done for major companies, but also something as seemingly simple as Microsoft Office products.


Productivity-focused training is the trend; gone are the days of sending employees out to public training courses so they can come back to the office and apply 10% or less of the knowledge they gained. Top companies are moving towards focused training methods that address their specific, real-world problems now.


The bottom line is that companies that invest in training have a distinct competitive advantage over those companies who follow the old model of “buy it and hope employees figure it out”. Shareholders shouldn’t just recommend, but instead demand that the companies they own increase productivity and thereby profits by training staff to use these technologies.


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