In 2010 22 million workers could have the legal right to demand training time. This could lead to an extra 300,000 people being given skills training. About 40% of employers provide no training whatsoever, which might cut costs but, in some cases, hobbles their performance.

There is time to start thinking through an approach to this, starting from deciding the range of training you need. But there’s a deeper issue. Your recruitment procedure should be stringent enough to get the right people to do the job without training to bring them up to speed. If it is your development spend can be focused on keeping them up to date with developments and concentrating on the softer leadership skills which affect performance just as profoundly as hard skills.