“Greedy work” stymies training

Australians too lazy to train? No, they’re too time-poor, with almost half officially rushed off their feet. Australia is banking its future on increasing its productivity through higher skill levels. But a leading employment academic is asking whether Australians can actually spare the time for the extra training. Professor Barbara Pocock, director of the Centre for Work and Life at the University of South Australia, told last month’s Group Training Australia national conference in Adelaide that “greedy work” and tightening work-life balances were constricting Australians’ capacity to train. Pocock said time and cost – rather than inclination – were the main deterrents to study. And she said that unless employers and education administrators recognised this – and developed the right “policy levers” to deal with it – Australia may never achieve the training levels it aspired to. “We really need to increase the opportunity for people to step back, reduce the pressure they’re feeling and meet their desire to increase their training,” Pocock told the conference. Pocock said her centre’s annual survey of work-life outcomes across Australia had revealed that one in four women and one in five men always felt rushed and pressed for time. “Not now and then, not just on Friday afternoons, but always,” she said. Slightly higher proportions again said they “often” felt rushed – leaving just under half the population mostly feeling stretched for time. “That really affects how they’ll respond when the boss comes and says, ‘I’d like you to do this training course’,” she said. “Many workers want to, but this is the background to their lives when they think about their capacity to extend their skills.” Pocock said time pressures affected everybody – low-paid workers as well as high-income professionals, part-timers as well as their full-time counterparts. She said while women and especially mothers were under particular pressure, younger people without kids – and older workers with independent kids – were also under the gun. “This is not a work and family issue,” she said. “Lots of people are affected by strain. They’ve either got lots of care responsibilities or very heavy work demands – or both in combination. “Inclination to participate in training is really affected by where you’re at in your life course. Taking account of that work-life situation will make a big difference to whether people can successfully engage in education.” Pocock told the conference there was an “enormous appetite” for study and skills development, with around a quarter of people in the workforce currently engaged in some sort of training – either “a degree on the side, or on-the-job formal training”. But 70 per cent of workers said time constraints prevented participation in training, and 52 per cent cited financial barriers such as fees, childcare costs and lost earning time. Transport difficulties are also a significant issue, affecting 14 per cent of workers. Pocock said a sizeable minority of workers – 48 per cent – simply weren’t interested in training, often because they doubted its relevance or benefits. “For lots of low-paid workers, it won’t make much difference to their earnings,” she said. “They’re a really good aged care worker before they’ve got the qualifications, and they’re a really good one afterwards. They’re doing it because it’s a compliance requirement. They laugh when you ask about the effect on the hourly rate. They say, I’m doing it because the boss wants me to do it. “Whether their skills actually change as a consequence of this very ornate machinery of skill development is a really interesting question. The workers themselves ask that question.” Pocock said workers – particularly older people – were drawn to relevant skills rather than qualifications for their own sake. “We need to look at issues such as how to make our education systems practical, how to make classroom pedagogy work well. How do we get our labour market incentives right so the wage increases that people get from training are significant?” But flexibility is the key, and Australia doesn’t do it well enough. “There are countries with much better regulatory regimes and systemic responses to these problems,” Pocock said. “Things like leave banks – workplace funds that can give people time in their working day to train. “We have to broaden our gaze beyond what’s happening in the workplace and training system, to really take account of what’s happening in the household, community and personal life. We need to look at new policy levers which create time and opportunities for workers to realise that preference – which is really there – to increase their skills.”