Only 22 percent of corporate finance and accounting executives are satisfied with the training options available to their employees, according to a new survey by KPMG.
Constrained budgets are limiting the ability of companies to explore new training options, however. More than two-thirds of respondents to the survey said they expected their training budgets to either decline or remain flat.
Over 100 human resources, accounting and finance directors participated in the survey which aimed to better understand why training programs aren’t working and determine what types of learning services might better serve employees.
The business executives surveyed reported that they would value new training options for their finance professionals and expressed declining levels of confidence in the effectiveness of their existing programs.
“Companies were found to be just trying to meet the immediate needs of their employees,” said KPMG Learning executive director Patricia Maslov in a statement. “Companies are facing significant challenges in developing workforce capabilities within their finance and accounting functions to ensure they compete effectively in the years ahead, especially considering when the importance of keeping their staffs current on industry trends and regulatory issues. Budget constraints represent a significant challenge in meeting these objectives.”
More than a third of the survey respondents said specific, structured and easily accessible training would be beneficial and improve training at their companies.
In the survey, 22 percent of the respondents said they expect their training budgets to increase next year, but 17 percent anticipate their training budgets will decline, and 61 percent predict spending for training would remain flat.
Half of the survey respondents said that investing in finance and accounting training programs is important to the future viability of their company, yet nearly an equal number (44 percent) said that finding sufficient funds and resources to be their biggest challenge in executing a compliant and valuable training program.
Two-thirds of the respondents indicated the ideal amount of training for employees is 21 to 80 hours per year. However, 40 percent of all respondents reported that their employees are only required take 10 hours or less of training per year.
“This disparity, between the required amount of training taken versus the ideal amount of training taken, indicates executives are looking for more relevant, streamlined learning programs to keep their employees current on changing rules and regulation,” said Maslov. “Forward-thinking companies are taking steps to prepare their staffs to respond to market demands.”
The survey found a disconnection between how human resource and financial and accounting professionals viewed training programs. While only 22 percent of financial and accounting executives ranked their company’s program offerings as excellent, nearly double that number of HR executives (44 percent) ranked their company training programs as excellent.
Finance and accounting executives also disagreed with HR executives regarding both the type of training required, but also the number of training hours employees should complete. While 38 percent of finance and accounting respondents said they would simply welcome an increase in training, 46 percent of HR respondents believed offering more specific, relevant training was a better solution that merely increasing the amount of training taken.
5 Comments
As a provider of training, I can say that most of our clients have found dissatisfaction with their training programs because of a disconnect with the program and the actual staff needs. You can't hire an outside vendor to come in and train and expect all the issues to be fixed. You need to have the right vendor, not the cheapest, one that assesses the needs and creates follow up programs to ensure ongoing success.
I work for a company teaches accounting visually with color and this adds more engagement for participants by taking a different approach to an otherwise mundane subject matter.
You have to try new programs and assess the efficacy of each program.
Posted by: accountingcomesalive | February 21, 2013 5:21 PM
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Corporate finance and accounting executives are not the only ones disappointed with training options for their staffs. Lately, there have been numerous discussions on the blogs and LinkedIn groups for in-house lawyers about what skills are essential to be successful as corporate counsel. It should come as no surprise that knowledge of basic finance and accounting principles was near the top. The sad truth is that most lawyers cannot read rudimentary financial statements. Conversations with corporate clients lack relevance when lawyers do not understand the impact of their advice on the accounting. Lawyers have very few options for picking-up this invaluable knowledge base, and rely largely on OJT, which has its limitations.
Posted by: Peter Fontaine | November 12, 2012 10:09 AM
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The obvious answer is use your CPA or Tax Advisor to consult with HR to establish what traits are desired from candidates and then have a Financial person advise how to find the good from not so good. I never have had any problem finding Financial people as a CFO, but I hired my own people, not using HR. Not really a difficult problem, but I think what is being overlooked are guys who may be 50+ in age while their experience all but overwhelms what cannot be had at college grad level or even MBA, as nothing is experience like the real thing.
Posted by: BRES | November 9, 2012 6:59 PM
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Interesting notation by Kingobees. Will need to check that out.
Regarding personnel managers' views on training, I must say that most whom I have encountered are not "tuned into" the needs of corporate departmental executives for their subordinates. Thus, in my view, it is understandable that they would tend to overate the caliber of their respective training programs.
Posted by: rrschneiderjr | November 9, 2012 9:32 AM
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In my work, I have found that financial professionals in the corporate arena are often a forgotten constituency in a company's learning strategy. As a specialized "overhead" function, the finance and accounting staff tends not to be a primary focus of company-wide learning leaders. In addition, the vendor community chases CPAs - but mostly those in public accounting, not corporate America. That said, I am aware of a new cloud-based offering of the not-for-profit Illinois CPA Society - called KnowledgeHub - that seems to be built with this audience in mind - relevant on-demand content, affordable prices, configurable platform. CFO and Controllers may want to take a look at the icpas.org website.
Posted by: Kingobees | November 9, 2012 8:40 AM
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