SAFC Launches Benefits of Training Document

As well as launching their Gender and Equality in Transport and Logistics report, SAFC’s Skills and Careers Management Team took to the Adelaide Pavilion in late February to launch the Benefits of Training document.

SAFC’s Skills and Careers Management Team is charged with the mission to ensure that a sustainable, appropriately skilled workforce is available to the Transport and Logistics industry in South Australia now and into the future. As part of this mission the Management Team looks to ensure the benefits of training a skilled workforce are well understood by industry. However SAFC through discussion with its membership and the industry state-wide believes the benefits of training are not as well understood as they could be and as a result this report was developed to address this issue.

The Management Team have noticed in more recent years the reigning in of training funds to the detriment of both new and current industry personnel alike. While once it may have been sufficient for business owners, managers and human resource professionals to spend money on faith and intuition alone under the assumption it directly led to profits, the declining fiscal outlook combined with reduced government funding means this is no longer the case.

The Management Team identified the lack of Australian case studies that examined the fiscal benefits of training to the transport and logistics industry as one barrier to training. Project administrators have a renewed focus on ‘Return on Investment’ and due to the lack of case studies identifying applicable benefits it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify training expenditure.

As a result, SAFC’s Skills and Careers Management Team has undertaken an extensive literature review and compiled the limited examples that illustrate the financial benefits of training to Australian and South Australian transport and logistics companies into the report. The report was further developed through discussions with selected South Australian transport and logistics companies as to ascertain the existence of training benefits to the industry.

The Case Studies have a special focus on how training positively impacts on Productivity, Safety, Customer Satisfaction, Increased Employee Morale & Company Reputation and Profile (known and agreed-on factors that influence a company’s balance sheets).

The literature examined in the report universally underlines the importance of training to transport and logistics companies, but also suggests that the profitability of a company is directly related to the quantity and quality of training it engages in.

In summary, the report by outlining the training experience of individual companies supports the case that there are indeed significant benefits available to South Australian transport and logistics companies that actively engage in upskilling their staff.

The Benefits of Training report should be used by all those that are involved in their company’s training processes to identify training opportunities for their company and to consider how they can begin to calculate training’s ‘return on investment’ to justify increased training for their staff.

A copy of the report can be downloaded from http://www.the-linc.com.au/benefits_of_training. SAFC has a number of free hard copies for distribution that can be requested by emailing admin@safreightcouncil.com.au.