Companies which invest in training put themselves in the best position to succeed and, most importantly, to grow.

For someone who’s worked in and around tech companies for a while, I’m no stranger to seeing the words ‘skills shortages’ dominating press headlines. The skills debate within the IT sector has been raging for years, to the extent that it’s become something of an annual discussion.

To see the same issues crop up in the SME space however, is a little more surprising. While I’m not suggesting for a second that hiring is an easy task for small or medium firms (far from it), the IT sector is relatively niche. SME, by its wide definition, isn’t.

Nonetheless, that’s the exact finding of a new report by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), which suggests that of the 7,149 businesses they surveyed, 45 percent are finding it tough to find the right man or woman for the job. Even in an environment in which we have a not inconsiderable level of unemployment, not to mention almost a million NEETS (Not in Education, Employment or Training), almost half of small and medium companies can’t get the skills that they need through the doors.

But the report isn’t all doom and gloom, and nor is this post. Dig deeper into the BCC’s 28-page tome, and you’ll find some great material on companies that are striving for growth.

Sector specific training

As part of its investigation, the BCC took a long, hard look at sector specific training, and how this was linked to growth ambitions within a base of more than 3,000 companies that said they offered such training. Almost 46 percent of companies that do offer specific training to their employees say that they’re intending on growing staff numbers by up to 50 percent.

Better still, just shy of 16 percent are aiming even higher, and plan to grow by more than half. And sector specific training may be a good way of defending against downsizing too, with just five percent noting that they were likely to shrink their employee base.

Does that mean that training guarantees growth, then? Likely not, sadly. But we can at least draw strong links between the two. For a start, businesses that do opt to provide that kind of training are likely to be more optimistic about growth overall. Nationally, ‘only’ 42 percent of businesses were looking to grow by up to 50 percent, four percent less than those who offer training.

And, better still, ambition seems to translate into reality. Another data set from the BCC report shows that the more likely a company is to offer any kind of work related education, the bigger it will be in terms of employee numbers.

Furthermore, whilst training doesn’t guarantee growth, it does certainly engender flexibility both for the individual and for the direction of the company – and flexibility is key to growth.

On the job training

It is well accepted that the days of ‘a job for life’ are long gone and that the average worker will have multiple careers during their working life. So regular on-the-job training has never been more important. Individuals must constantly develop new skills which are practical and specific to their industry but also develop softer skills which are transferable across different sectors and industries.

Flexible workers and flexible businesses are the most likely to succeed. An interesting example which epitomises the importance of flexibility is the success of the UK recruitment sector in recent years. Recent research by SAP analysed the performance of the UKs fastest growing companies over the last 10 years. It emerged that the recruitment sector has been one of the most successful industries growing steadily and thriving regardless of broader economic conditions.

One of the explanations for this is that the recruitment sector is one of the most agile and flexible. For example, a recruitment specialist providing services to construction can quickly adapt and change to providing services to another industry, like technology, if the market conditions dictate. By developing transferable skills recruitment consultants have shown that they can stay ahead of the market trends.

Of course there are other factors which also contribute to the broader success of the recruitment sector. It also goes without saying that the propensity for flexibility or indeed training to achieve success varies across different industries. In tertiary sectors like recruitment there is more scope to adapt and change quickly whilst more traditional industries like manufacturing or engineering have far larger turning circles, even with a highly trained workforce in place.

But nevertheless the evidence continues to support the argument that companies which invest in training and support a multi-skilled, flexible workforce put themselves in the best position to succeed and, most importantly, to grow. In the current tough climate, such evidence can’t be ignored.