Almost half of all employees received professional training last year in France.  This is still not enough compared to what’s at stake socially and economically for companies and their employees.  The list of issues that require training is long.   Just to name a few:
- Career development and the necessary skills for career advancement
- Changes in how work is organized
- New regulation and compliancy issues in safety, hygiene, quality control, the environment, sustainable development, and/or corporate responsibility
- An increase in psychosocial risk factors
- IT and digital innovations
- Globalization

 

Today in France, one out of two workers receives some sort of training, which lasts an average of thirty hours. In ten years everyone will be concerned, and the training will last an even longer length of time.  

 

Furthermore, according to a study done by Ifop Kelformation*, 81% of people who received training had a positive opinion of their experience.  The study also shows that 44% of the people polled would like to either do another training, or continue the one that they started, in particular using their DIF hours.  Some of them even stated they were willing to pay for the training themselves.

 

This brings up the question of the need for training, which I believe calls for a training clearinghouse as explained in my blog on 17 April 2008. 

I am happy to see that the idea has been picked up by Henri Rouilleault, head of INSEE and former director of Anact. Mr. Rouilleault was made responsible by Laurent Wauquiez and Nathalie Kosciusko Morizet for a « project related to employment, in the current context of post-recession where there is a high level of unemployment and a need for new tools for growth. »  One of his suggestions is to set up a lifelong training account for each person which would follow them throughout their career, funded by the person’s different job benefits, such as company saving schemes, and of the course, the DIF.

This more personalized system would make training more accessible and would allow for more participation and motivation from the employee.  The training clearinghouse would increase national efforts in terms of access to information, which is a source of future wealth and employment, and would also establish the right to training as an individual right linked to the person, not necessarily linked to his position or social status. This would establish a life long training scheme for each and every one of us.