1.3 Skills development for SMEs
Upskilling of employees is a preferred strategy for employers to cope with skills shortages, often in the form of continuous education and training. But large groups of employees would benefit from more informal forms of skills development.
Globally, small and medium enterprises account for 90 to 95% of all firms and 60 to 70% of total employment, when both formal and informal SMEs are taken into account. SMEs are thus the backbone of economies and employ the largest number of people but they invest less in training their workforce, even in countries known for their strong training cultures such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. Large companies have their own training facilities for upskilling or they outsource it. SMEs would benefit from upskilling methods that are cost-effective for them. The OECD ‘TSME’ project (Leveraging Training and Skills Development in SMEs, 2013) surveyed some 1,000 SMEs in six countries, including Turkey. The project results indicate that SMEs use more informal skills development than formal training, and that informal skills development activities have better outcomes than formal training activities. Companies use different forms of informal learning, such as on the job training and mentoring, internal informal training co-ordinated by department managers to share practical work or specific knowledge or work planning, team meetings and company training sessions animated by internal experts or someone from outside the company are also used.
The TSME project includes a case study about training in SMEs in the Ortadoğu Sanayi ve Ticaret Merkezi (OSTIM) industrial zone in Ankara, Turkey. The survey findings indicate that most SMEs do not value training and skills development, with only 28% of SMEs participating in VET and 25% in informal training. Training opportunities are mostly offered to high- and medium-skilled staff rather than low-skilled staff. Most SMEs cannot provide an assessment on the outcomes of training, both formal and non-formal. This could have a negative effect on the interest in training activities. The case study concludes with (among others) recommendations to identify and disseminate success stories of SMEs from different sectors who continuously invest in training and skills development; and to provide on-the-job coaching/mentoring to micro and small enterprises to stimulate development of green skills, and innovation, entrepreneurship and social skills in SMEs.
Example of Albania from ETF Good practice forum 2018:Albanian Institute of SMEs
The Albanian Institute of SMEs supports existing entrepreneurs to learn and understand new things and concepts while running their business, so that they can tackle the issues and problems related to business and industry. The Institute devises entrepreneurship development programs in a number of topics. One of the programmes is an annual Summer Academy, organised with an international partner (Köstinger Consulting, Austria) to support SMEs in building know-how to boost competitiveness in international markets. The Summer Academy was one of the selected training providers for the ETF Good Practice Forum in 2018.
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