Findcourses.co.uk reveals top public sector training buyers for 2013-14

Findcourses.co.uk has conducted an analysis of training trends in the public sector during 2013 and 2014 to gain insights into how much and what kind of training public bodies are searching for.

Staff training schemes and a focus on continuous development are often quoted as benefits of working in the public sector. But with a workforce of around 5.4 million employees across a vast array of different bodies, services and professional roles, there are likely to be significant variations in the amount of training purchased, as well as the typeof training that receives the most attention and investment.

Findcourses.co.uk has attempted to gain new insights into the issue by performing an analysis of all the training enquiries sent via the findcourses.co.uk website – as well as its partners on The Independent and London Evening Standard – from 1st January 2013 to 31st December 2014. The resulting data, summarised in this infographic, provides some interesting insights into the training behaviours and preferences of different entities across the public sector.

In terms of the origin of the enquiry, the data was divided into three categories:

• Local Government: including County, District, Borough and City Councils;
• NHS: including Foundation Trusts, Hospitals, Emergency Services and Clinical Commissioning Groups;
• Other public bodies: including Ministerial and Non-Ministerial Government Departments, Agencies and Associations.

It reveals that Local Governments are, overall, the most active bodies when it comes to searching for professional development solutions, accounting for 45% of all enquiries, followed by the NHS at 32%. Other public bodies accounted for the remaining 23%. The top 10 bodies in each category, in terms of the volume of requests for information sent to training providers, are listed below.

Councils

1. Walsall Council

2. Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

3. Birmingham City Council

4. Cheshire East Council

5. London Borough of Ealing Council

6. London Borough of Enfield Council

7. Flintshire County Council

8. London Borough of Islington Council

9. London Borough of Wandsworth Council

10. Westminster City Council

NHS

1. NHS Wales

2. St. George's Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

3. Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust

4. Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust

5. NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT)

6. NHS North Staffordshire

7. Alder Hey Children's Hospital

8. Black Country Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

9. Bradford District Care Trust

10. Chelsea and Westminster Hospital

Other Public Bodies

1. Foreign & Commonwealth Office

2. Transport for London

3. HM Prison Service

4. National Probation Service

5. Public Health England

6. Cabinet Office

7. Department for International Development

8. Department of the Environment (Northern Ireland)

9. Independent Police Complaints Commission

10. Ofgem (Office of Gas and Electricity Markets)

A number of London Borough Councils featured in the top 10 list for the Local Government segment, making London the most training-focused city when the requests from all London-based Councils are combined (10.9% of the total). When taken individually, it was Walsall Council that made the greatest number of training enquiries in this category during the period 2013-14.

Though Local Councils account for the largest proportion of enquiries overall, the three single entities that sent the greatest number of requests per unit across the three categories were the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Transport for London and NHS Wales.

Types of training requested

Overall, the majority of requests originating from the public sector regarded courses in Project Management or Human Resources & Organisational Development. Together, these training topics were requested in 21% of all enquiries sent by public sector employees. Healthcare, Health & Safety and Business & Management follow as the 3rd, 4th and 5th most popular types of training requested.

Variations do exist across the different public sector categories, with NHS staff unsurprisingly requesting more training in Healthcare than other public entities. Yet the differences are not as significant as one may expect, as demonstrated by the following list highlighting the top 5 areas of training requested by each type of entity.

Councils

1. Project Management

2. Human Resources & OD

3. Health & Safety

4. Business & Management

5. Procurement

NHS

1. Healthcare

2. Human Resources & OD

3. Project Management

4. Computer Skills

5. Health & Safety

Other Public Bodies

1. Project Management

2. Human Resources & OD

3. Law & Legal

4. Business & Management

5. Computer Skills

Research performed earlier this year for the Findcourses.co.uk Training Industry Barometer highligted the following five course titles as the most highly requested by the public sector in 2014.

Top 5 courses requested by the public sector in 2014

1. PPP Project Finance and Infrastructure

2. International Trade - Import/Export

3. Certified Associate in Project Management

4. Primary Health Care Assistant

5. Facilities Management and Maintenance

Number of delegates

The average request sent was for 4.3 people. This suggests that a substantial proportion of the requests sent were for teams and groups of staff requiring training in similar areas.

Number of enquiries decreasing YoY

Public sector enquiries continue to make up a minority of all the requests sent via the Findcourses.co.uk website(s). And this proportion is decreasing, with comparative data from 2012-13 showing that the volume of training enquiries sent by public sector representatives (as a proportion of the whole) has halved in the past two years.

Findcourses.co.uk is part of the Educations.com Media Group, which operates a number of educational search engines across Northern Europe, directed both at students and working professionals.

Findcourses.co.uk also publishes an annual Training Industry Barometer, which provides an overall analysis of the developments seen on the market during the previous year as well as an outlook for the future.