Leadership

Study: Training Down, Mentoring Up

By Jessica Stillman

Updated on: January 27, 2009 / 12:35 PM EST / MoneyWatch

The Find: US companies cut training budgets by 11 percent last year - the fastest rate in ten years - shifting to a reliance on social networking and mentoring as the credit crisis started to bite.
The Source: The 2009 Corporate Learning Factbook from consultancy Bersin & Associates.

The Takeaway: When Bersin & Associates crunched the numbers for their annual report on the US training market, the results were hardly surprising considering the general economic picture; training, like every other sector took a hit. The nation's overall training budget fell by slightly more than $2 billion, an 11 percent decrease and the sharpest decline in ten years. The contraction in the sector was also reflected in the number of trainers employed by big companies. This figure fell from 5.1 to 3.4 per 1,000 workers.

So what's the point for managers besides underlining yet again that things are pretty bleak? The takeaway lies in Bersin's findings on what replaced all this lost formal training: collaboration, knowledge sharing, social networking, coaching, and mentoring. These more informal, lost cost methods of sharing knowledge within an organization have shown an uptick as employers look for ways to invest in their employees despite the downturn. Perhaps they deserve a look as a way to both productively occupy workers through the downturn and as programs that will help firms emerge stronger when the economy begins to awaken again.
The Question: Has your firm found success (or failure) with low cost alternatives to formal training?

(Image of training by Biology Big Brother, CC 2.0)