While the heads of Western Australia's booming companies feel the national economy has improved over the past year, only 20 per cent see the trend continuing, according to the latest Quarterly Confidence Index released by The Executive Connection.
While the heads of Western Australia's booming companies feel the national economy has improved over the past year, only 20 per cent see the trend continuing, according to the latest Quarterly Confidence Index released by The Executive Connection.
The survey found that Western Australian companies were the least likely in the nation to be doing business overseas, with only 54 per cent of companies engaging with other nations. WA companies were the least likely to deal with the United States (6 per cent) and New Zealand (9 per cent).
However, WA was the most likely to trade with India, with 16 per cent of companies surveyed.
Sandgropers were also the most likely to have a mentoring scheme in place for their employees, with 43 per cent of companies surveyed, while performance reviews were also most highly favoured, with 37 per cent of WA respondents saying they used this method to measure effectiveness.
While 69 per cent of both WA and Queensland respondents said up-skilling was the main reason for training, it was mostly in-line managers who controlled the training budget, with 40 per cent in both states, while Human Resources personnel controlled 11 per cent of these budgets.
WA in-line managers were also most likely to make training decisions in WA, with 41 per cent doing so - while only 31 per cent of WA chief exectives did so - the lowest rate in the nation.
The full text of a TEC announcement is pasted below
Australian chief executives are strongly optimistic about the current state of the economy according to the latest survey released today by TEC (The Executive Connection), the world's leading chief executive membership organisation.
"We've never seen a survey showing only 4% of chief executives saying that times are tougher now than 12 months ago," explained Mike O'Neill, TEC chief executive.
"It all looks good, and 29% believe the economy is going to get even better in the next twelve months.
"Training budgets are forecast to increase significantly - a factor that links to the skills shortage and the belief by 86% of chief executives that training helps to retain staff. A massive 94% also suggest that training has a positive effect on organisational culture.
"The positive impact training has on staff retention is powerful, because past TEC surveys have indicated that the skills shortage is one of the most pressing issues for Australian CEs. CEs know that each morning they should be prepared to see a resignation letter on their desk, and they are looking for ways to change this," O'Neill explains.
Up-skilling and staff motivation were identified as the main reasons for conducting training. The main concerns with training were staff down-time and return-on-investment. 24% of organisations aren't measuring the effectiveness of their training.
In-house training, such as mentoring programs, was identified as the preferred method of training with 43% of CEs indicating they used in-house methods more than 50% of the time.
Mentoring schemes are one such in-house training method that is on the rise, with 52% of CEs indicating they already had a scheme in place or were currently developing a mentoring program, a significant rise from the from the 39% that indicate this at the same time last year.
In terms of their own training needs, CEs indicated that people management and organisation strategy were the predominant areas that CEs needed more training, with nearly three quarters of CEs stating 20% or less of their training budgets was spent on training for themselves and their executive team.
Economy Highlights
- 40% of CEs indicated economic conditions were better than this time last year, up from 31% at this time last year
- CEs in WA and SA were the most optimistic with 54% & 52% respectively, VIC CEs were most pessimistic with 34% suggesting they had improved
- 29% of CEs indicated they expected economic conditions to improve in the next 12 months, with only 10% suggesting they would worsen (significantly less than this time last year where 23% expected it to worsen)
- WA CEs being the least optimistic with 20%
- 74% of CEs indicated they expected increased sales revenues in the next twelve months
- SA was by far the most pessimistic in this regard with only 55% indicating they expected increases in sales revenues
- CEs in the service industry were significantly more optimistic (80%) than the manufacturing industry (67%)
- 60% of CEs indicated they expect increased profitability in the next 12 months, down slightly from this time last year and last quarter (62% & 65% respectively)
- 58% of CEs indicated they would be increasing staff numbers in the next year, down from 65% this time last quarter
- QLD CEs (73%) were the most positive about increasing staff numbers and SA the most pessimistic (45%)
- More than half of CEs indicated they are currently doing business overseas, with New Zealand (28%) and China (22%) the main countries where international business is being carried out
Training and development - highlights
- 35% of CEs indicated performance reviews were the most common method of identifying training needs, with identification by in-line managers the next most common with 28%
- Female CEs (15%) are more likely to use skills audits to identify training needs than their male counterparts (3%)
- 57% of CEs indicated that up-skilling was the main reason for conducting training with staff motivation the next with 17%
- Time of work (31%) and ROI (23%) were identified as the main issues faced when managing training
- CEOs (41%) and in-line managers (38%) were identified as the main decision makers when it comes to training
- In-line managers (35%) were identified as the main controllers of training budgets, with finance departments next on 25%
- 63% of CEs indicated their training budgets had increased this year, down from 73% this time last year
- Organisations are spending more of their annual turnover on training with those spending between 3-5% increasing to 27% compared with 12% this time last year. Companies that spend between 0-2% of turnover (64%) have decreased significantly compared to this time last year (85%).
- 47% of CEs indicated technical skills was the main area for training in their organisation, followed by staff management skills with 22%
- Female CEs are significantly more likely to conduct staff management training (35%) than males (21%)
- In-house one-on-one training (41%) was identified as the preferred method of training with external day training next with 31%.
- More than half the CEs surveyed (52%) said their organisations currently had a mentoring scheme in place (36%) or were currently developing a mentoring scheme (16%)
- 72% of CEs indicated that 20% or less of their training activities were spent on executive team training
- The majority of CEs indicated 'people management' (40%) and strategy (33%) were the areas where CEs required training
- 35% of CEs stated they did not have a program for embedding learning straight after training, while the most common methods of embedding learning were staff presentations (21%) and peer-to-peer training (20%)
- Performance reviews and KPI comparisons (31%) was identified as the most common method of measuring training effectiveness, followed by participant feedback (21%) with 24% saying they did not measure the effectiveness of training at all
- 86% of CEs were confident that training 'always' (21%), or 'sometimes' (65%), helped to retain staff
- 94% of CEs agreed with the statement that training had a positive effect on organisational culture with 31% saying it had a large positive effect and 63% indicating it had a moderate positive effect
- Only 2% of the CEs surveyed said that the majority of training is wasted. 38% say 5% or less is wasted and 34% say between 6-20% is wasted.
