How does your company’s training spend compare with the national average?

We look at what most companies are spending on learning & development, and what you can do to make the most with a limited training budget

BY Juliette Willow 09 Jun 2014

If your company spends anything less than $1,500 per employee on professional development, it could be falling behind. A Bersin by Deloitte survey found the average spend per employee is $1,500 – but within large organizations, that number is even higher.

Large companies tended to spend more than $19,000 annually on each executive, $12,850 on senior employees, $5,599 on mid-level employees, and $2,587 per first-level managers.

But if your budget is limited, don’t fret, said Deloitte’s managing principal of talent development, Bill Pelstor. What’s more important is that your HR team is actually concerned about strategizing for development in the first place. “It’s less about that dollar number,” explained Pelstor, than it is about the attention given to development.

And if you have to choose between individuals to train, Pelstor said emerging talent is a good place to start.

“When the investment dollar is low,” he said, money tends to “flow to the middle and less to the lower level and the executives. The targeted investment is normally at mid-level…people with very special roles driving value.”