Last year was not the best for businesses and especially if you are in the training business, we all know the first budget to be cut when times are hard is training. At least in the driver training industry we are seeing many more companies looking to meet their ‘duty of care’ obligations and risk assess & provide training to their drivers. However, this upturn in business could actually put additional pressures on the traditional fleet driver training companies and I believe that we may see more of the traditional companies go out of business this year than ‘went to the wall’ last year.
So why will this year be harder for the traditional fleet training companies, when business is better? The answer is simple; traditional driver training relies on trainers, some of these trainers would have found other jobs during the recession, but more of a problem for the training company is cash flow! The trainers will all want paying at the end of the month for work completed that month, but the training company will have to wait 60 days or more to be paid. Even the largest companies in the fleet driver training industry would have seen their cash reserves dwindle in the last 12 – 18 months.
The other problem for the larger traditional companies is the popularity of online driver assessment and training systems, partly because they are much cheaper than traditional training and partly because with modern computer technology the e-learning systems are very good, resulting in crash reduction statistics which compare very favourably with on road driver training.
Now I am not against on road training, but I also live in the real world and understand that with limited budgets companies want more value for their money. For that reason E-Training World developed the e-60 package. This combines online solutions with on road training for those drivers who would benefit from that type of training and for a single payment of £60 per driver. That’s another reason why traditional driver training companies will find it harder this year, but that’s their problem, we at E-Training World are only concerned with providing the best on & off line systems / services at affordable prices.
