Attitudes towards competence development among employees in Tourism Industry : A Swedish pilot study

• This study aims to investigate empirically what attitudes employees in tourism industry have towards participation in publicly funded competence development programmes. Such investigations are lacking in the research on Tourism industry. By competence development here means participation in personal competence development programmes that might have a positive impact on the staff’s learning and on their work places. This impact will be found out through the employees’ subjective perceptions. In this study the terms “competence development programmes” “training programmes” and “skills development programmes” are used as synonyms. Also in accordance with Statistics Sweden terms of “business” and “work place” are used as synonym. The methodological approach used in this study is email-interviews with 12 employees (four women, eight men) that have participated in these programmes during recent years. This includes CEOs, owners, employees and one instructor that also is a business owner himself. A majority of them have academic education and their average working years in the industry is 17. They represent various sub-industries. Their average age is 46 and they mostly come from small sized firms. They participated in different courses that were offered by public organizations for employees and employers, or by private organizations. The courses were paid either by public means, by the firm or by a combination of both. The courses were mostly organized by public organizations but in some cases also by private organizations or a mix of private and public. They expressed that their participation in general had a positive or very positive impact on their workplace, and among others resulted to better knowledge, to acquire a wider network, new ideas, new experiences and opportunities and gave more inspiration, motivation and self-confidence. Concerning effectiveness of courses offered by the public organization the opinions are different; some had no comments about it, some found them very effective, some believed that these courses are effective in some but not in all cases, and finally some believed that courses organized by private organizations are more effective. The largest problems for competence development in the industry are lack of time and money and lack of tailored courses.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Övrig annan samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

competence development

tourism industry

attitudes

impact

Sweden

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)