Buckinghamshire County Council has found that training is a popular benefit among staff. Feedback from its annual benefits survey shows that training is consistently rated as one of the organisation's top three perks. For this reason, it plans to offer each employee a minimum of five days training and development this year.
The learning programmes on offer include language lessons, keyboard skills, and secondments to different departments. Employees must agree on the type of training they will take with managers.
Gillian Hibberd, corporate director, organisational development and HR, says: "We like to offer our staff the type of training that will help them progress within the organisation."
She also believes that the training programmes that are on offer are a huge attraction to applicants during the recruitment process. "It is one of the things that makes people want to come and work here. In fact, the reason I left the retail sector for local government was because of the training and progression opportunities," she adds.
It puts particular emphasis on training for social workers. "We can't recruit social workers, so we literally have to grow our own. We recruit them and then put them through the training," says Hibberd.
