Business insurance customers could be interested to learn that pre-employment training courses might not help those about to lose their jobs, it has been claimed.
John Philpott, chief economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), maintained the courses could in fact speed up such people's exits.
He added that the courses are supposed to help those who are going to be made redundant prepare themselves to be more equipped job hunting.
According to the December 2008 Office for National Statistics latest figures, the employment rate for people of working age was 74.2 per cent for the three months prior to October 2008, which is down 0.4 percentage points both from the previous quarter and the same time last year.
It added that the number of private sector workers fell by 128,000 in three months prior to October.
According to the CIPD's autumn 2008 Labour Market Outlook, more than one-quarter (26 per cent) of firms polled are planning to make redundancies in the next three months.
This falls short of the 38 per cent recorded in winter 2007–08 when the global crisis first surfaced.
