Employers Plan to Spend Less on Training : Work force: Survey of Southland companies conducted by Irvine firm also finds that most believe it is the individual’s responsibility to hone job skills.

IRVINE — Despite increasing calls from corporate America for a better-educated, more prepared work force, a majority of employers in Southern California said they will scale back training efforts this year.

A survey conducted by Market Research Associates of Irvine found that 54% of the 1,353 companies polled planned to spend less for worker training in 1995 than they did a year ago. One-third of the respondents projected increased spending, while 4% said their training budget would stay the same.

The results surprised employment analysts because most recent studies have suggested that companies nationwide are spending more on worker training programs.

Curtis Plott, president of the American Society for Training and Development, said his group’s survey conducted in January showed that almost half of 150 Fortune 500 firms planned to increase their training budgets over the next two years, while just 9% reported cutbacks.

Plott said businesses in California, however, may be reducing training because of continued concerns about the regional economy. If that is true, he warned, it is a “short-term strategy that can backfire on you ultimately.” Training is crucial to a company’s future competitiveness, he said: “The investment in skills of employees is really cost-effective.”

Nonetheless, Market Research’s survey found that 56% of the employers believe it is up to individuals to ensure that their job skills are competitive in the future, while 31% said the burden should fall on employers. Eleven percent said that responsibility lies with educational institutions, and 2% said with government.

Ton Bui, president of MTI College, a vocational school in Orange, said the survey results suggest that employers may have decided to hire skilled people rather than pay to train current employees. “It may be that employers are getting more people already with training,” he said.

Market Research’s telephone survey was conducted between mid-October and early December. The random sample included a cross-section of companies, small and large, in various industries in Orange, Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Kern counties.

The survey has a margin of error of less than 2.9%, said Barbara Fields, president of Market Research. The survey was conducted for Thomas Temporaries, an Irvine employment agency that has commissioned similar surveys over the past 10 years measuring various employee issues.

The latest survey surprised Bob King, a program manager at the Employers Group in Los Angeles, who said he has noticed an uptick in attendance this year for training programs sponsored by his organization, which has a membership of 4,000 in Southern California, mainly mid-size companies.

King said attendance for his group’s training seminars slipped during the recession years. But like other analysts, he believed companies would spend more for training now that the economy is coming out of recession.

In one positive note, the survey found that the bigger the company, the less likely it would be to decrease spending on employee training.

Of those surveyed with 1,000 or more employees, for example, 43% said they planned to reduce their training budgets this year, while 64% of those employers with fewer than 25 workers said they would scale back training.

Indeed, some big corporations, such as Fluor Corp. in Irvine and PacifiCare Health Systems of Cypress, said they planned to spend more for training this year.

Wanda Lee, a senior vice president at PacifiCare, a health maintenance organization with 4,500 employees nationwide, said that the company will spend at least $3 million--or between 2% and 3% of its total payroll--for training this year. That is about triple the budget for last year, she said.

“Skill training is becoming more and more critical just for people to stay in their current jobs,” Lee said.

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Fewer Training Dollars

A survey of more than 1,350 companies in five Southern California counties shows that most expect to cut their employee training budgets this year. Budgets will: Increase: 33% Decrease: 54% Remain the same: 4% No answer: 9%

Who’s to Pay?

Future workers can also expect less employer-provided training, as nearly twice as many companies say it should be a worker’s responsibility. Training responsibility: Individual: 56% Employer: 31% Schools: 11% Government: 2%

Source: Market Research Associates; Researched by DON LEE / Los Angeles Times