Training stepped up: Achievements and new challenges

There are substantial benefits associated with training in the workplace. The presence of skilled workers in enterprises and in the broader labour market can positively influence investment at the enterprise level and in the general economy. Enterprises that raise access to workforce training programmes will be in a better position to exploit new technologies, and good quality training can boost the skills levels, motivation levels and efficiency of workers.

The NSS2007 covers a broad range of trainingrelated themes, but three important dimensions of training are selected for consideration. They refer to:

• Changes in training rate which brought a doubling of overall access to training but deepened inequality of access between workers employed in small medium and large sized enterprises.
• Training access increased faster than expenditure on training between 2003 and 2007. Could this have affected the quality of training?
• Factors causing enterprises to increase training - market forces create a strong stimulus for training activity.

Training rate and enterprise size

In 2001, raining rate was estimated to be 16%. By convention, training rate is calculated by dividing the number of workers receiving training by the total workers employed and expressing the outcome as a percentage According to the NSS2003 and NSS2007, training exposure was calculated to be 25% in 2003 and 53% in 2007. In 2003, one in every four workers was exposed to some form of training and by 2007, one in every two workers benefited from some form of training.

This doubling in the aggregate training rate between 2003 and 2007 is a remarkable achievement. But the 2007 training rates are paradoxical because the impressive aggregate training rate increase masked substantial variance in training access between workers in small, medium and large enterprises. Although all enterprise size groups experienced higher training rates, the magnitude of the increase rose with enterprise size. Employees of small enterprises experienced the smallest increment and employees of large enterprises were beneficiaries of the largest increment in training access.

In 2003, only five percentage points separated the average training rates of small, medium and large enterprises. Yet, four years later the training spread across enterprise size expanded to 30 percentage points. The training rate of large enterprises (64%) was almost double the rate of small enterprises (34%), which means that in the year a worker employed in a large enterprise was twice as likely to receive training as her contemporary in a small enterprise.

What were the implications for training access in occupations, or by race, gender and disability?

Training rate in the occupations

As was to be expected in view of the fact that the overall training rate more than doubled, there were increases in training rate in all occupational categories. However, the gap between the highest and lowest training rates by occupational category widened between 2003 and 2007.

In 2003 the difference between highest and lowest training rate per occupational category was 15% (professionals 18% and sales workers 33%), whereas in 2007 the difference was 31% (community and personal service workers 43% and professionals 62%).

This increased divergence in access between occupations was exacerbated by the widened gap in training opportunities between workers in small and large enterprises irrespective of occupational category. The gap must also be attributed, at least partially, to the unequal distribution of occupations between enterprise size categories (e.g. large enterprises may employ higher proportions of professionals than small enterprises).

A significant shift took place towards more training for professional, technical and administrative workers in the 2006/07 year. Relative to 2002/03, training opportunities for operators and elementary workers declined. The general picture was for training opportunities to become more accessible to higher skill workers and less accessible to low skill workers. The two low-skill categories, ‘machinery operators and drivers' (50%), and ‘labourers' (48%) received the lowest exposure to training.

Gender and training participation

In 2002/03, 22% of women and 28% of men received training. Four years later, in 2006/07, 56% of women received training while there was a 51% training rate for men. Training rates in 2006/07, though favouring women, were more equitable than in 2002/03.

The discrepancy in training rates between males and females increased with enterprise size in 2007. In gender terms, females working in large enterprises were by far the biggest beneficiaries of a changed distribution of access to training.

In large enterprises 69% of females accessed training while only about thirty percent of males in small enterprises received training opportunities. And in 2006/07, females enjoyed noticeably higher training ratios compared to men in the high skill managerial, professional and technical occupations, but noticeably lower training ratios in the community and sales occupations.

Race and training participation

The second dimension considers relative access to training by race. In 2002/03, the order of training access by race (highest black, followed by coloured, white, and Indian) became Indian (59%), then white (56%), then coloured (52%), then black (51%) in 2006/07. Whereas black workers had received the highest training rate in 2003, by 2007 they had the lowest access to training. The redress needs and the human capital potential of black workers were not being addressed sufficiently in 2007.

Thirdly, firm size emerged in 2007 as a critical determinant of training rate as experienced by race group. In other words, training access was stratified first by enterprise size and within that, by race.

On aggregate, training ratios increased for all race groups across all enterprise size categories in the period. However, between 2003 and 2007, by far the largest increase in access to training in each race group was among workers in the large enterprise category and the smallest increase in each race group was among workers within the small enterprise category. Thus black workers employed in large enterprises with the lowest training rate by race in that enterprise category (61%) enjoyed practically double the opportunity to receive training than their contemporaries employed in small enterprises (31%).

Disability and training participation

Despite a 50% increase in the training rate between 2002/03 and 2006/07, disabled workers still received substantially less training than the average exposure across the whole workforce where training doubled.

Dr Andrew Paterson, a research director at the Education, Science and Skills Development (ESSD) programme when the research took place, is now a senior researcher at the Development Bank of Southern Africa. Ms Mariëtte Visser is a research manager in ESSD and Mr Jacques du Toit is a lecturer in the Department of Town and Regional Planning at the University of Pretoria.