UK.gov to scrap new staff training rights
Clegg's Britain
Posted in Management, 11th August 2010 10:42 GMT
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The coalition has today announced plans to strip workers of new rights to request time off to improve their skills.
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said the move will help reduce the regulatory burden on employers. If implemented, 11 million workers will lose statutory protection for their training requests.
The "time to train" rights only came into force in April, for companies with more than 250 staff. The legislation was due to be extended to all employers in 2011.
It means businesses have a legal obligation to consider requests to pursue qualifications or develop new skills during working hours. They do not have to pay salary during the training, but may only refuse a request for a "good business reason".
The legislation is unpopular with employers, who in April claimed compliance would cost them £500m. The Institute of Directors, which lobbied against the new rights, branded them "unnecessary, poorly thought through and damaging".
The Labour government said it introduced "time to train" because too many employers failed to appreciate the value of training to the economy.
The Communication Workers Union today condemned plans to scrap the legislation.
There is strong evidence from TUC research that when people undertake learning at work it can improve productivity and reduce sickness absences, so this is a relatively small investment that can really pay off for employers," general secretary Billy Hayes said.
"With the reduction in courses offered at evening classes and in FE Colleges there are fewer and fewer opportunities for adults to take up learning. Often the workplace is the only place where those essential skills for employability – such as literacy, numeracy and IT - can be accessed."
An unusually brief consultation on scrapping the rights runs until 15 September. The coalition said the period for gathering external views had been shortened in order to meet the schedule of its "Reducing Regulation Committee", which includes ministers from across government. ®
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COMMENTS
Cynical? me?
The Institute of Directors, which lobbied against the new rights, branded them "unnecessary, poorly thought through and damaging".
In the next breath, he bitterly complained about the lack of trained UK workers and asked for visa waivers so he could import workers from abroad who'd work 70 hrs for 40 hrs pay
yes well that's all fine and dandy for you then isn't it?
"Even without this legislation, companies still sent me on training programs"
well my company doesn't, and doesn't look likely to do so anytime soon despite loads of bollocks about "personal development" & "career progression"
i agree with you that the training would mainly be to their benefit, but as we're run by bean counters it's seen as an unnecessary expense, after all, you can already do your job can't you? -can't you?
Way to go, Britain, other countries do exactly the same and win
How dumb can British governments get?
With today's rapidly changing technology continual updating/retraining is required.
In my North American business career I have spent, at employers expense, approximately 6.8 years at non-university product related training.
The dummy politicians who made this decision should study places such as Singapore, Greece (even), China and VietNam and see just how determined people are to improve their skill-sets.
Wow... Short sighted isn't it?
Where I work, admittedly not in the UK, we get all the books we need brought for us (buy the book and claim it as expenses) and for self study we can use works time provided we put double in of own time. For training we get the time off, and for certification we get the exams paid and 1/2 day free.
And it works, most people here are loyal to the company because the company treats the employees well. We do unpaid overtime *only when really needed* (read twice or three times a year) without complaints and take any issues in our software personally.
I've never understood the UK need to treat employees like dirt, and then act surprised when people jump ship and return the favour.
What do you do as an employer when you want to use the latest and greatest technology? Hire a new employee as you refuse to train existing ones?
And in other news...
... bears defecate in areas with lots of trees, and the Pope follows a specific monotheistic religion...
As pointless rules go, it was a bit of a classic. "Good business reason", like perhaps "if you're not working then we can't get the job done"? Which is all any manager needs to say for every training request given to them, so there's absolutely no way of making it stick. In other words, it didn't give any statutory protection in the first place.
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