Different skills and their different effects on personal development: An investigation of European Social Fund Objective 4 financed training in SMEs in Britain

This paper examines a data set that has its origins in European Social Fund Objective 4 financed training programmes in small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in Britain to examine the extent to which three different personal development outcomes are attributable to different types of skills acquired during the training process. The three outcomes in question are: whether an individual gains more confidence at the workplace; whether an individual obtains a qualification; and whether an individual quits the company at which the training took place. To the extent that it is possible to isolate one skill dimension from an inherently multi‐dimensional bundle, it is observed that some of these skill dimensions have important, if sometimes different, impacts on the likelihood that the outcome in question occurs.