Survey: Workers Say Training Improves Job Performance

Despite the groans any corporate manager is likely to hear when the words "compliance" and "training" are used in the same sentence, the majority of employees find on-the-job training both beneficial and helpful.

Nearly 60 percent of workers said that training helped them better perform their job, according to an online employer training survey released today by Mindflash. The survey of more than 200 workers in medium and large businesses across industries also found that 71 percent of workers said their employers considered training to be important. The reported number of hours of training, however, was minimal with only 38 percent of employees saying they received more than 20 hours of training in the past year.

"People actually are willing to devote their time, and their money in some case, saying that this training really has a positive impact on our job,"said Randhir Vieira, vice president of product and marketing at Mindflash. "It’s just amazing to me."

Two-thirds of workers also noted that more training would deliver further on-the-job benefits, and three out of five workers would be willing to take training courses during non-work hours. If that’s not enough, of the 12 percent of employees willing to pay money to advance their own training, more than 70 percent said they’d spend as much as $1,000 of their own money on more training.

"I don’t think employers are really looking at the training time as an investment in their employees," Vieira said. "Creating training is also an investment… but the rewards and the returns speak for themselves coming straight from the employee’s perspective."

Fortunately for employees, more training could be coming down the pipeline; Our benchmarking report "Measuring Knowledge Investment" found that the majority of L&D leaders projected an increase in their learning and training budgets in 2014.