Canada’s Training Ground
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Canada’s Training Ground
Full Report
May 2009
Dan Kelly, Senior Vice-President Legislative Affairs
Audrey Azoulay, Senior Policy Analyst
Aneliese Debus, Economist
Bradley George, Director of Provincial Affairs
Louis-Martin Parent, Policy Analyst
Plamen Petkov, Senior Policy Analyst
Heather Tilley, Policy Analyst
Building on its own body of research, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) has produced an original report that measures small- and medium-sized businesses’ contribution to workplace training. It is based on feedback from 8,077 independent business owners. Informal, on-the-job training is a type of workplace training that is most often appropriate for, and performed by, small businesses. Informal training is often neglected by training assessments because it is difficult to measure and is deemed to provide less benefit to the economy than formal training.
This study looks at whether small businesses invest in training, how intensively they do it and how workplace training efforts change with the size of business. As the findings demonstrate, smaller businesses invest a disproportionately higher amount than larger businesses in informal and total training per employee annually. Given that the smallest businesses may be challenged by tighter budget constraints, a greater dependence on under-skilled workers and a higher rate of employee turnover due in part to employees moving to larger businesses, their perseverance in providing training in the workplace is commendable.
CFIB’s results indicate that small- (under 50 employees) and medium-sized firms (50-500 employees) spend on average $1,958 per employee on informal training and $746 on formal training for a total of $2,703 per employee per year. For an employer hiring a new employee with no experience, the cost is double. Overall, the SME sector annually spends over $18 billion to train employees. Of that total, $12.7 billion is spent on informal training.
