Adding It Up: How Much Training Do Organizations Provide?

ASTD: The 2000 ASTD international comparisons report: ASTD's annual accounting of worldwide patterns in employer-provided training, Alexandria, 2000.

• Overall Expenditures
• Employees Trained
• Training Hours

Overall Expenditures

Overall, employers spent an average of $627 per employee on training in 1998. Training expenditures per employee were highest among respondents in the United States ($724 per employee) and lowest in Asia ($241 per employee).

Comparing 1997 with 1998, the United States and Canada both experienced increases in training expenditures per employee (11 percent and 18 percent, respectively), while Japan and Europe showed decreases (7 percent and 32 percent, re spectively). 'This increase in the United States and decrease in Europe enabled the United States to overtake Europe as the leader in expenditures. Canada edged closer to Europe, but remains number three in overall expenditures per employee. Because Asia, Australia, and New Zealand were combined into a single region called "Asia/Pacific" for last year's report, comparisons over time could not be made. Separating Asia from Australia/New Zealand revealed that the former had the lowest level of expenditures, replacing Japan, which had the lowest amount the previous year.

A country's level of development also appeared to translate into differences in the level of spending on training in 1998. Countries classified as high on the HDI had training expenditures per employee of $684 compared with a much lower amount of $252 per employee in HDI medium countries. When calculated as a percentage of payroll, training expenditures per employee were highest in Europe (3.2 percent of payroll) and lowest in Japan (1.2 percent). Europe was the only region with expenditures greater than 3 percent. All of the regions experienced increases in training expenditures as a percentage of payroll from 1997 to 1998. The largest increase was seen in Canada, where expenditures increased from 1.5 percent in 1997 to 2.3 percent in 1998.

As for projected changes from 1998 to 1999, the largest increase was reported in Australia/New Zealand, where a 26 percent increase in total training expenditures was anticipated - a full 11 percentage points more than the next highest region, which was Europe with 15 percent. The previous year, Japanese firms responding to the Measurement Kit projected a 5 percent increase, the lowest among all of the regions. Growth projections for 1999 for Japanese respondents increased to 12 percent. The increase in Japan resulted in Canada having the lowest projected percent change in expenditures for 1999 (9 percent). Compared with growth projections for 1997 to 1998, the estimates decreased by 6 percentage points in the United States from 20 percent in 1998 to 14 percent for 1999.

Looking across regions, ASTD identified a number of factors associated with how much organizations spend on training. For example, in every region except Canada, organizations with higher expenditures per employee tended to have relatively fewer employees for every training staff member. In Europe, Japan, and the United States, spending on training per employee increased with the percentage of employees trained. In Europe, Canada, and the United States, the level of training expenditures as a percentage of payroll increased with the hours of training provided per training-eligible employee.

Other factors associated with training expenditures varied by region and include the following:

• In Asia, firms that rely more heavily on learning technologies spent more per employee on training. Also, Asian firms that employed innovative training practices spent more on training measured as a percentage of payroll.
• In Europe, firms that used more high performance work practices spent more on training as a percentage of payroll.
• In Canada, organizations with more employees were likely to spend less than smaller organizations.
• In Japan, firms with heavier use of learning technologies and innovative training practices had especially high training expenditures as a percentage of payroll.
• Higher spending by firms in the United States (both per employee and as a percentage of payroll) was associated with the use of more innovative training and compensation practices as well as high performance work practices.

Employees Trained

Respondents in Australia/New Zealand led the way in the percent age of workers receiving training in 1998, reporting a training level of 77 percent of employees. The United States, Europe, and Canada were close behind with a range of 70 to 76 percent of employees. Respondents in Japan provided training to the smallest percentage of employees (45 percent).

Compared with 1997, the United States and Canada reported slight increases in the average percentage of employees receiving training (1.5 percent increase in each).

Europe experienced a slight decrease (2.4 percent) in the percentage of employees receiving training, while Japan remained unchanged at 44.9 percent.

Japan had the highest average employee-to-trainer ratio among the regions (914 employees per trainer), even in light of a large decrease of 46 percent from 1706 employees per trainer in 1997. Australia/New Zealand had the lowest employee-to-trainer ratio (252:1). Firms classified as high on the HDI had 371 employees per trainer, whereas those categorized as medium had substantially fewer employees per trainer (269:1). All of the regions except Europe decreased from 1997 to 1998. Europe increased from 305 to 354 employees per trainer.

Looking ahead, respondents in every region expected an increase in the percentage of employees receiving training in 1999, with the projections ranging from a 1.6 percentage point increase projected in Japan to an 8.5 percentage point increase in Asia. By 1998, respondents in the United States anticipated providing training to 82 percent of employees. In actuality they provided training to 76 percent and once again set target projections at 82 percent of employees for 1999. The highest level of projected percentage of employees receiving training was Australia/New Zealand (84 percent of employees). In contrast, respondents in Japan expected that still less than half (46.5 percent) of employees would receive formal training in 1999.

Training Hours

Respondents in Europe reported providing the highest number of total hours of training per employee (49 hours per eligible employee).' The variation among the other five regions fell in a relatively narrow range of 26 hours of training per employee in Asia to 33 hours per employee in Canada. There was only a slight difference between high- and medium- developed countries.

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