The quality of training and the design of work

Currently a demand for improvements in the quality of training in this country can be heard. The major piece of evidence of this is the publication of a consultative document in May 1981 by the Manpower Services Commission, ‘New Training Initiatives’, followed by the government White Paper of the same title seven months later. There is a basic flaw in much of the thinking about how to improve the quality of training or what can be achieved in career terms by the recipient of ‘improved’ training: the authors of these documents have been no more successful in avoiding this than have others. What the documents do is provide a starting point here for the twin-pronged argument that the key to improving the quality of training is the design of work and a much-needed spur to the movement for the redesign of work, often known as the movement for the improvement of the quality of working life, may lie in training policies and practice.