Investment in workplace training is happening, so why are we still seeing sluggish productivity?

We know a significant amount of work-related training is driven by compliance requirements. It is often knowledge-intensive, delivered online, repetitive, and does not necessarily change practice. The economic benefits of work-related training have declined by 14 per cent since 2007, and the average number of hours spent in training has fallen by 17 per cent.

Workplace compliance training is undeniably important. It ensures that employees adhere to laws, regulations, and internal policies, which is crucial for maintaining safety and operational standards. However, compliance training is not upskilling. Valuable time is being taken up in risk avoidance exercises, leaving no capacity or desire to uplift skills. 

One of the significant issues we face is the loss of productivity due to the lack of a central system for gathering evidence of self-directed workplace learning, informal learning, and formal learning. This problem is particularly acute in industries where people frequently change jobs. 

Without a way to recognise, track, and verify all developmental learning efforts, employees often repeat the same or very similar training at each new job, wasting valuable time (and money) that could be spent on more progressive skill enhancement activities.

A central tracking system would reduce duplication and create potential for learning to fill skill gaps and progress capability. This is how training and experience together will boost productivity.

AI is making recruitment harder for employers

The recruitment landscape has become more challenging. With the help of AI tools, the market is now flooded with applicants with perfect resumes and cover letters matching all the position requirements, making it harder for employers to identify suitable candidates.  

One of the critical needs in today's job market is a mechanism to capture evidence of skills, including what has been learned in compliance training. This evidence needs to be held by the individual, making it their responsibility to own their learning and codify their experience and skills.

More applicants do not necessarily mean better candidates, and the process of sifting through numerous applications is time-consuming and inefficient. 

Open recognition of skills

We need to embrace the concept of open recognition of skills and realise that valuable employees trade skills as a currency, rather than for loyalty.  

The European Union has a mature community committed to open recognition standards, developing approaches to build a future where all skills – formal and informal – are valued, verified, and recognised across industries and borders.

SkillsIQ was a signatory to the Open Recognition Paris Declaration in 2024, and we are passionate about the opportunities to ensure the Asia Pacific region plays a role in the adoption of open recognition systems for a skills-based ecosystem to drive the future of work.  

Consider the construction industry, where compliance training is vital due to stringent regulations, the need for up-to-date knowledge of building regulations, and the tangible daily risk to health and safety. A construction worker who works on various sites may have to undergo the same compliance training at each new job. 

Imagine if they had an evidence-derived digital record of their capability in risk-based (compliance) skills. Instead of repeating the same training at each new job, they could focus on the gaps and then spend time on developing new skills or indeed progressing their capability with skills already held. This is how we will unlock essential productivity gains. 

The solution is already here

Tools like SkillsAware are changing the landscape of workplace learning. SkillsAware is a human-centered, AI-powered skills recognition engine that provides a library of over 65,000 standardised machine-readable skills statements (plain English Rich Skill Descriptors-RSDs) that are derived from industry-developed national training standards. They cover task and context, allowing us to start evaluating the probability that someone has skills from the ground up.

SkillsAware offers a practical solution that we can implement immediately. We can begin to build a more efficient and effective system for evaluating and verifying skills, ultimately enhancing productivity and making the recruitment process easier.

Workplace compliance training is essential, but it isn’t upskilling. We need to focus on creating open recognition mechanisms to evaluate and verify skills, making it easier for individuals to own their learning and for employers to identify suitable candidates. This allows employees to spend their time upskilling rather than repeatedly completing compliance training.