engleski

Employee training as investment in sustainable growth of the company

It has long been clear that an individual’s formal education is not sufficient for continuing competitiveness on the labour market. The ever-important professional experience, together with everyday practice, is linked to informal education, which is (generally) the responsibility of an individual employee. In keeping with this fact and within the life cycle of a company, a continuing development and the highest possible flexibility in relation to the changing environment are of great importance. The current global market and its mechanisms make the existing knowledge less valuable. Moreover, only those knowledge workers prepared for constant knowledge acquisition and learning will subsist as winners. Knowledge has become more available than ever ; the question is how and how often we reap the benefits of this accessibility. Individuals, engineers, experts, managers and employees contribute to both a company’s competitiveness as well as their own by their development, education and training. Do employees, i.e. their supervisors pay enough attention to staff education? The above mentioned theoretical facts have been generally accepted and are a standard basis in the development of any quality or sustainability system within companies. The term lifelong learning actually encompasses the imperative of permanent educational progress, which is also underlined by the EU “club” that Croatia will soon be joining. The main topic of this paper is gaining insight into the existing theory and its application in everyday business field. Thus conclusions can be reached on the additional development possibilities that are available in our environment. By conducting interviews in several small and middle-sized companies and by analysing the research conducted in the Republic of Croatia, we will try to find their common features related to employee education, as well as valuable potentials that should be further developed in the years to come.

employee development; sustainable company growth; global market; lifelong learning.

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