Abstract:

The dynamic nature of human capital and the changing needs of business processes make training a necessary complement of external labour markets in providing firms with the required skills and competences. The study of training practices and the search for systematic association with organisation and trainee characteristics is therefore expected to provide indications about how firms and workers may make the best of training investments and how policy makers may remove or lessen obstacles to training initiatives.
If a consolidated literature agrees on antecedents to the intensity of training efforts such as firm size, industry, and personnel ratio (Bassanini et al., 2007), an increase in uncertainty and complexity in the last decades has switched the focus to those workplace characteristics that may encourage and enhance continuous learning. High involvement work systems, which stimulate learning and resilience by promoting active participation by employees (Boxall, 2012), attract particular attention. High involvement work systems are associated with more intense training (MacDuffie and Kochan, 1995; Osterman, 1995; Lynch & Black, 1998) and stronger effectiveness of training initiatives (Felstead et al., 2010; Thomas and Qiu, 2012; Inanc et al., 2015).
Highly educated employees, more intensively involved in knowledge-based tasks, could profit to a larger extent from the learning opportunities stemming from high-involvement work practices (Inanc et al., 2015). Similarly, early exposure to a participative work system may benefit the future career of younger employees by enhancing employability skills. However, evidence on the impact of high-involvement systems on the training opportunities of highly educated workers, especially younger ones, is still inconclusive. In addition, despite the intuition that training quality matters (Felstead et al., 2010), evidence is still missing on significant associations between training contents and work system features.
The empirical test of the relationship between high-involvement work systems and training opportunities for younger highly educated employees requires firm-level information on both work system, training policy, and employees’ prevailing age. The 2013 wave of the European Company Survey (ECS) run by Eurofund, focused on a representative sample of (former) EU28 establishments, is the most recent source of EU data fulfilling those requirements. Based on ECS 2013 this paper seeks to advance understanding in the relationship between workplace practices and training practices in three ways. First, the empirical analysis identifies three different training policies based on the contents of training activities (namely, Training on health and safety issues, Training focused on current skill requirements, and Training focused on future skill requirements). Second, ordinary least square regressions and multinomial logistic regressions are implemented to show that high-performance work systems, a prevalence of younger employees, and a prevalence of employees graduated from tertiary education significantly increase not only the intensity of training efforts, but also the probability of training focused on future skill needs rather than health and safety issues or current skill requirements. Third, econometric analyses reveal that the work system adopted at the establishment level significantly moderates the probability of accessing specific types of training by younger educated employees.

Keywords:

Training, Training contents, Employability, Younger employees, Highly educated employees, High-involvement work systems.