Viewpoint: The price of training — can we afford it?

A stock‐in‐trade beef by trainers is that their budget is the first to be cut whenever the organisation faces a squeeze. Despite this, in many countries expenditure by firms on training still comes to a formidable figure. Not infrequently, it will equal the sum invested by the public school system. Yet the pay‐off is often much lower than could, or should, be achieved; and a prime cause of this is the lack of front‐end analysis.