Training as an investment

The answer is yes. It is clear that skills development and skills identification are crucial to giving industry enterprises sustainability and a competitive edge domestically and internationally.

There are long term and recognisable productivity, profitability and human capital benefits for organisations embracing skill recognition:

• skills assessment and recognition can help to build greater workforce flexibility, efficiency, productivity and reduce business costs
• the capacity for innovation is increased
• change is more easily and successfully introduced when all skills have been clearly identified
• it allows an enterprise to build on the existing skill base of the workforce
• employee morale, confidence and retention is improved through a sense of achievement and the potential for career development
• assessment against national training package competencies helps meet duty of care and regulatory requirements
• employees gain a sense of ownership of their job.

Skills development and recognition focused on competency is not a new concept. It already occurs in every enterprise in some form: at some stage an employee's performance is measured against the skill requirements of their job. The cost to formalise the process of skill recognition by assessing employees against national competencies and having the results recorded nationally, is not a significant add-on.

• Every enterprise, at some stage, invests time and money in training an employee to do their job.
• Every enterprise has an existing skill base among its employees.
• Enterprises already assess employee's skills - sometimes formally, often informally. Someone in the organisation makes a judgement about whether or not an employee can do a job, perhaps judging how well the employee carries out the task.

The time, energy and money invested in this process is more effectively spent, if the whole process is formalised and accurately recorded. Assessing an employee's skills against national competencies provides a formal mechanism for determining competence in a task or role. The additional cost of the assessment process can be negligible when compared to the time already invested in training or on-the-job learning.

Formal skill recognition - by registering the result nationally - provides documented evidence of an employee's level of competence. This satisfies occupational health and safety (OHS) and other regulatory requirements as well as providing valuable information about the flexibility of the workforce in an enterprise.

Enterprises using skills development systems based on competency standards, have reported a change in the culture of the enterprise over time. Some of the benefits are measurable - others such as increased morale and confidence, are not easily measured but are more noticeable.

When measured against the benefits, formal skill recognition is a worthwhile and effective investment in the future of the business.

Read about the different pathways to skills development and recognition:

• Enterprise training: the traditional pathway to skills development

• Enterprise training plus formal assessment

• RTO training and assessment

• Traineeships and Apprenticeships

For further information on training in the forest, wood, paper and timber products industry, please contact your state-based Industry Training Advisory Bodies (ITABs) below.