Abstract
Employees are regarded as assets to a firm. Training and developing them so that they can contribute towards the success of a firm should be paramount.
Though, with the economic upheaval , and with pressures mounting on firms to survive, it is widely assumed that these techniques and initiatives have taken a back seat, and rather is the first area to face budget cuts.
The researcher has tried to investigate this school of thought. This research looks at the SMEs with in Ireland . SMEs have always been regarded very important , heavily contributing towards the Irish economy , which has been so badly hit in the past few years because of recession.
Hence, this research is a study about the impact of recession on training and development within Irish SMEs.
The researcher takes a qualitative approach towards data collection and through means of interviews conducted on managers and employees found that firms who are looking to survive and are in a financially strained position are cutting down expenditure in every area and not just T&D, where as firms who are able to still perform well in the recession situation have maintained their training initiatives, although the focus in on providing customer service training.
The research discusses that recession has not been particularly hard on T&D , but rather every area of the business. It also discusses how T&D is not the only element to provide motivation to employees but elements like recognition and progression are considered extremely important by employees.
The findings provides new insights to the literature that is already present and can be investigated further with a larger sample size.
Author key words: Training and development, motivation , recession , SMEs
