How companies can have the personnel they need

Companies have strategic and competitive reasons to train their personnel. Improvements in productivity, the incorporation or updating of technology, and the development of new processes, require training processes, as pointed out in CAF's publication  "Educación técnica y formación profesional en América Latina. El reto de la productividad"  (Technical Education and Professional Training in Latin America. The challenge of productivity), 2014. 

However, companies provide little training, they under-invest, or do not train at all, at least not formally. According to World Bank data (2010), only 43.7 percent of the companies in the region offer formal training to its workers.    

Among the reasons for which companies do not provide training are the following: the cost associated to training, the risk that the worker after receiving training will abandon the company, or the need to increase the salary after the training ends. This is common in smaller sized companies such as SME's. 

In general, companies lack information regarding the benefits and costs of training their employees One of the regional challenges to increase companies' productivity and competitiveness is to have a technically trained human capital. Thus, it is necessary to promote training among local, small, and non-exporting companies that currently do not provide training, to reduce the gap between the companies' demand for capacities and the supply provided by educational systems.