2 in 5 employees dissatisfied with their company’s L&D programmes

This has pushed 55% of employees to upskill outside their workplace.

Two in five employees (38%) in Singapore have expressed dissatisfaction towards their company’s training programmes, NTUC LearningHub (NTUC LHUB) has found. 

In their Workforce Learning in Workplace Transformation report, NTUC LHUB said employees described the programmes being offered in their company as either “fair,” “bad,” or “very bad.”

The employees cited the limited range of topics covered by the programmes (40%) as the main reason for their discontent towards their company’s learning and development programmes (L&D).

Other reasons include programmes being boring and having a conventional training approach (37%), and training topics not being relevant for career advancements (18%).

The dissatisfaction towards the company-provided training has pushed more than half 55% of Singaporean employees to upskill outside their workplace, according to the report.

Apart from a “bad” in-house programme, employees are upskilling outside their workplaces “to stay relevant” (70%) and “remain competitive during this period” (61%).

The study meanwhile suggested that companies improve their training programmes as it also can help retain talent, with 86% of employees saying “availability and comprehensiveness of training courses” are key factors for them to remain loyal to their employer.

About 29% of those surveyed believe that their respective companies do not act on insights from post-training evaluations to improve training programmes, or are uncertain of what is done with their feedback.

“​​For businesses to be sustainable, developing human capital to be future-ready is key. Putting training at the front and centre of the business is one way to overcome the prevalent skills gaps and labour shortage,” NTUC LHUB’s Director of Human Capital, Sean Lim, said.