Since 1990, we have been hearing how important learning is. It's indeed a big market. In 1998, the US companies spent 66 billion dollars on training. May 2000 was the month of ASTD, the American Society for Training & Development. Let me share the HR tendencies I noticed. The figures are base on the 1999 Industry Report from Training Magazine and various ASTD reports.

Livelong learning is here to stay. More and more money and time is spend on training people. In 1998, the training expenditures in the US increased to 2% of payroll. In Europe, the expenditures even reached 3,2% of payroll. This means 29 hours (US) to 49 hours of training a person. US Benchmarking participants projected a 14% jump in training expenditures between 1998 and 1999.
Soft skills training is a must. Soft skills account for about 35% of the total training expenses. A 120% annual compounded growth is expected for the next few years. 88% of companies provide communication skills training, 85% provide management skills training, 78% of organizations provide executive development programs, 67% provide personal growth programs.
More and more of this training will happen over the internet. ASTD has put e-learning at the center of its strategy for the next 2 or 3 years. Several estimates predict that by 2001 more than 34% of training expenses will be for learning technology based training and other self-paced learning. IBM and others companies already use e-learning for soft skill courses, drastically reducing the amount of time one has to spend in the classroom.
Given the increased importance of training, training performance evaluation will become mainstream. The typical "smile sheet evaluation" will be replaced by a first order evaluation related to usefulness and by second order evaluations of job performance.

The recommendation?

As a company, remember that training people helps to keep them in the company. Not getting trained is an often cited reason why people leave their employers. 41% of employees working in a company with a poor training reputation plan to leave the company within the yea, VS 12% of employees at companies with good training opportunities.

As an individual, know that 99% of people need training, even if only 75% get trained. If you want to get training like "the average person", make sure the money the company spends on training you is at least 2% of your total salary cost (or even 3% if you live in Europe). Next to training that is product or technology oriented, this training should include some soft skill training. However, it is clear that companies spend more on training those they see as raising starts or as top performers.

If you want to get more value for your money, include some internet or other e-training: you will be spending less on travel costs and hotel costs (about 40% to 60% savings). Even soft skills can be partially trained over the internet. As the IBM experience shows, the classroom is only needed for doing some exercises that are really people related.

Be ale to account for the training you got: annual performance reviews and individual development plans are the least you can do, formal documentation of skills and official certificates are the next level.