Promoting Investments in Training

The cost of education and training should be seen as an investment. Increasing this investment can be fostered by recognizing that investing in education and training can be a shared responsibility of both the public and private sector. For various reasons, however, governments, enterprises and individuals often under-invest in training.

In order to sustain increased and effective training investments by all parties concerned - governments, enterprises, sectoral and professional associations, NGOs, individuals and others - the 2000 International Labour Conference" (Conclusion 12 of the Report of the Committee on Human Resources Training and Development adopted by the ILC) asked the ILO to:

• inquiry on statistics on investment in training

• develop a database on current expenditure on vocational and continuing training;

• suggest a series of benchmarks on investments in training that would act as a mirror and reference for countries, sectors and companies.

As part of the major work that will be undertaken in the 2002-2003 biennium, the ILO is currently developing a conceptual framework for the development of the database and discussing issues of, and methodologies for, measuring enterprises investment in training.

Investments in training will be also discussed in the ILO Tripartite Asian and Pacific Meeting on Training for High Performance in Enterprises, Bangkok, Thailand, 12-14 December 2000.