ukwa 2 cover - United Kingdom Warehousing Association

20 Training
Survival training
Skilled staff make more profits says Dr Ross Moloney, Head of Intelligence at Skills for Logistics
As the G20 commits $1trillion to
boosting the economy, UK industry
must do its bit to help push the economy
forward through current difficulties. In
order to survive UK plc needs to make the
most of its greatest asset – its people. At a
time where economic and business news is
frequently bad, Skills for Logistics’ (SfL)
research shows that skills development is
vital and that companies investing in training
their people are more likely to survive
through the downturn and beyond.
Employers agree, with 83% surveyed (in
SfL’s survey of 4,500 UK logistic companies)
commenting that training is important
despite the economic downturn. Improving
the quality of personnel is even more
important in the hard times than in the
good times and suspending staff training at
the moment is a false economy. The better
the quality of the workforce then the better
are the business’ prospects to survive and
thrive. Industry specific training designed to
create highly skilled staff is paramount in
generating profits sufficient to survive the
recession.
During harder times, organisations start
to look at where they can cut costs and
logistics employers agree with us - skills
development is simply not an area where
costs should be cut. Whilst it seems obvious
to suspend or cut training budgets, well
trained staff with recognised qualifications
and skills such as fuel efficient driving or
customer services can make the difference
between winning and losing contracts, and
can have a direct impact on a business’
bottom line.
As the fifth largest industry sector, worth
£75 billion to the economy and underpinning
all other sectors, an efficient and well
skilled logistics workforce can make a difference.
The results of the survey underline
this with 40% of companies that had not
participated in training saying that they saw
a decrease in profitability, compared to
28% of companies that had trained.
Training staff is crucial to performance,
www.ukwa.org.uk
April 2009 April 2008