MTI Survey 2009

Success in global markets with systematical

personnel and organizational development

“Best HR Learning & Development

Investments Optimized for European and
Asian Organizations”

This second version of our Asia survey displays latest trends and predicts future
demands
Table of content

“Best HR Learning & Development Investments Optimized for

European and Asian Organizations” ....................................................1

1. Introduction......................................................................................3
1.1. Aims.................................................................................................................................3
1.2. General conditions ...........................................................................................................4

2. Review: Results MTI Survey 2008...................................................5

3. Summary: Results MTI Survey 2009 ...............................................7

4. Evaluation ....................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

4.1 Background .....................................................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
4.2 Part 1: Facts and Figures.................................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
4.3 Part 2: Economic Situation .............................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
4.4 Part 3: General Competency Assessment .......................Error! Bookmark not defined.
4.5 Part 4: Respective qualification requirements ................Error! Bookmark not defined.
4.6 Part 5: Implementation of qualification areas .................Error! Bookmark not defined.
4.7 Part 6: HR Investment decisions.....................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
4.8 Part 7: Collaboration with external experts ....................Error! Bookmark not defined.
4.9 Part 8: Return of investment (Opinions).........................Error! Bookmark not defined.

5. Conclusion....................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

1. Introduction
Competency, qualification and further training are gaining more and more
importance for the success of companies. Social change, technological
development, innovations and ultimately globalization are responsible for the
changes in work processes as well as the changes in companies’ organizational
structures. Mastering all these new operational challenges require new and
additional qualifications. Employees can acquire these in their daily work, but will
mainly acquire the newly required skills in class room based or other forms of
trainings.

Together with the industrialized nations of Europe and North America, companies
in the emerging markets in Asia, South America and Africa are increasingly
facing the challenge of offering and implementing employees’ qualification
measures and therefore enabling them in the future to reach and maintain a
strong position in regional and global markets.

1.1. Aims
The target of this survey is to provide comparisons between companies in
Europe and Asia with regards to operational qualifications and further education.
Results will also be linked back to the previously conducted investigations by
Machwürth Team International (MTI) “Best HR Learning and Development
Investments optimized for European and Asian Organizations (2008)”.

The second target of the study is to set up a long-term online survey instrument
to better understand future qualification and training needs of employees in
companies. This enables us to discover trends and changes more easily and
create offerings tailored to the respective needs. Therefore the survey can be
seen as an online diagnostic tool for international companies regarding personnel
and organizational development.

Since this survey intends to clarify the relation between investments in training
measures and the training outcome it can also be seen as a tool to help to
predict future demands and maybe can give companies some hints how to
improve learning and development for their employees.

Since a specific forecast is only possible with the feedback of different

companies we want to thank all participants of this year’s survey. We hope our
discovered results compensate your effort filling out the online questionnaire. It
would be our pleasure if you also interested to join our survey in 2010.

1.2. General conditions

As companies highly value learning contents and methodology to be specifically
adapted to their needs, it is of great importance that training providers are
informed about such needs and specific wishes each company might have.

By providing the results of such survey, Machwürth Team International aims at

contributing to the optimization of further training offerings. Therefore we
developed a detailed online questionnaire of 49 questions with was available in
German and English. In spite of the long questionnaire we were able to collect
responses from 66 participants. We could analyze all of them. The 66
participants can be divided in 28 European and 38 Asian companies. The survey
period lasted from September to November 2009.
2. Review: Results MTI Survey 2008
Before discussing the results of the current MTI Survey 2009 we want to give a
briefly review of the results of the MTI survey in 2008. Following the
summarization of the most important facts and our conclusion:

• Participants: 54, 35 from European companies, 19 from Asian companies

• About one-third of our participants work for companies with more than
1000 employees; the higher percentage of small companies who
participated in the survey was located in Asia
• 79% are active at their headquarters for more than 8 years (Europe: 91%,
Asia: 57%); generally the participants from companies in Asia are younger
• The headcount is increasing in European as well as in Asian companies
• The personnel learning and development tends to be decentralized
(particularly in Asia) as well as the training budget
• In European companies there is a focus on team development trainings, in
Asian companies on IT-trainings
• European trainings are seminar-oriented, in Asian companies qualification
is done by training-on-the-job
• European companies consider that their trainers are able to deal with
current and future training demands, Asian companies see this differently
• Big challenges for the future in both regions are: motivating the
employees, increasing companies’ competitiveness and increasing the
work performance to achieve companies’ goals
• There are high qualification requirements for managers in both regions
• Generally the training requirements in Asian companies are higher than in
European companies
• Training topics like “integrated and target oriented organizational
development” (in both regions), “change management” (in European
 companies) and “stress management” (in Asian companies) are not
successfully implemented yet
• The consistency of working with the same external training facilitator is
much more prevelant in European companies
• “transfer successes” and “recommendations of a third party” are the
reasons for working together with external training vendors

Conclusion: There is a need for consulting services concerning “organizational

development” in Europe and “strategic personnel development” in Asia.

Please contact the author Ines Majewski

from MTI ASIA for the complete survey:

ines.majewski@mwteam.com
+65 6562 8992

THANK YOU!
3. Summary: Results MTI Survey 2009
• Participants 66, 28 from European companies and 38 from Asian companies
• Almost one-third of our participants from Europe are working for companies
with more than 1000 employees. In Asia most of our participants work for
small and medium sized companies.
• The majority of our participants is working in big companies with more than
1000 employees worldwide
• 76% of the participants companies are active at their headquarters for more
than 8 years
• The participants belong to different industries. Most of the participants are
active in the automotive and service industry
• Especially companies in Asia consider their current business development as
good. Almost half of the European companies are satisfied with their current
business development
• The estimated percentage of an increasing headcount is about 5-10% within
the next 12 month. If the participants forecast a decreasing headcount, they
consider a decrease of around 5%
• The big challenges for European companies are developing new products
and services, cost savings and restructuring the organization. Asian
companies see a big problem in opening up new markets, cost savings and
recruiting qualified staff
• European and Asian companies believe that problems exist which their
current employees can not deal with the expected challenges in the near
future
• The organization of the personnel development in European countries (35.6
%) as in Asian countries (41.67 %) is done by the HR department
• In Europe and in Asia the manager and the HR department together decide
who takes part in training measures. It is not yet common in Asian companies
that the superior and the employee talk about further qualification measures
which can be helpful for the further development of the employee
• In Europe and Asia functional trainings are most common. Frequently
implemented in European companies are also methods and skill trainings
and IT trainings. In Asian companies especially method and skill trainings as
well as sales trainings are covered by internal trainers
• In European and in Asian companies employees mainly achieve their
qualifications through training-on-the-job measures (EU 15.08, Asia 19.21%)
and in seminars or training courses (EU 17.46%, Asia 13.56%)
• Employees in European and Asian companies take part in training on
average once a year. At an average the annual training day per year for one
employee is 3.425. Generally the trainings are arranged during working hours
• Two-thirds of the European companies consider that their current internal
trainers are able to handle the training requirements of the company’s staff.
In Asian companies the opinions are divided over this issue: 51.52% consider
the current trainers can cover the training needs, 48.48% consider they can’t.
• European companies have some doubts that their own trainers can handle
the training requirements in the future. Companies in Asia consider that
there will be a big lack of trainers
• For companies in Europe and in Asia increasing the work performance and
staff motivation are the big challenges in the near future
• A trend is seen that high positions need a high level of competency in all
expertise, methodical competency and social competency
• Generally the expenses per employee are less than 500 Euro per year (EU
38.46%, Asia 48.57%). Obviously European companies have a bigger
training budget, this is linked to the position and the size of the company
• Regarding the size of the training budget most of the participants consider
that it is enough to cover the requirements for qualification measures at their
company location. Especially in Europe the training budget increased in the
last five years
• In both regions companies work together with external facilitators (EU 92%,
Asia 83.78%). Main reasons are: dealing with specific topics and extending
know-how
• The consistency of consulting externals is higher in Europe. While European
companies prefer to consult already known vendors (83.33%), Asian
companies often change their facilitators.
• Budget issues: Because of the economic crisis, European and Asian
companies consider functional trainings as very important that should not be
reduced in terms of budget funding. Also investments in sales trainings,
methods and skill trainings and IT trainings should not be changed.

Conclusion: European and Asian companies consider personnel development

for their employees as important and as necessary for the further business
development. Companies in both regions know that the captivity and capability of
their internal trainers is limited and therefore they are working together with
external training providers. Staff motivation and increasing work load are big
challenges for companies in both regions. External training providers should take
action in these areas of qualifications. The problems for the Asian HR
development are much bigger than for European companies, but Asian
companies are already aware of these problems and started working on them.