The ‘learning society’, and small and medium-sized enterprises: empowering the individual?

Abstract

At the heart of the United Kingdom Government's vision of the ‘Learning Society’ in the 1998 ‘Learning Age’ Green Paper is the individual citizen, equipped for employment in the ever-changing, ‘knowledge-based’ economy of the future. Integral to this is the need for individuals to have responsibility for their own learning throughout life. It is particularly tough in the context of small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – notoriously weak in terms of infrastructure and investment in training and development. Two initiatives deemed to carry the definitive marks of the ‘Learning Society’ are Employee Development (ED) programmes and Individual Learning Accounts (ILAs). Employees in SMEs figure prominently in Government ‘targets’ for ILA take up. Whilst ED schemes have received most notoriety amongst large organisations a number of the UK's Training and Enterprise Councils have sought to spread such activity into the SME sector. Drawing on in-depth research as part of a TEC sponsored evaluation of an ED initiative within SMEs and a pilot ILA programme, the article contrasts how three SMEs have engaged with such ventures and their relative impact. When put into practice in this taxing and unfavourable environment serious questions appear as to the extent to which ILAs are ‘fit for purpose’. ED, in contrast it is suggested, has the potential to be effective in SMEs and in ways that overcome the problems that beset ILAs in this same environment. ED, rather than ILAs, may offer the greater prospect of genuinely empowering individuals within an ongoing educational/developmental process.