An evaluation on the employees’ retraining programmes in Hong Kong

Hong Kong has experienced an economic transformation from a manufacturing‐based to a service‐based economy which has impacted on the demand for manual labour. In 1992, the Employee Retraining Board was set up to provide employees’ retraining programmes (ERP) for unemployed manual workers. It aims to help unemployed manual workers to acquire and develop knowledge, skills and abilities so that they can re‐enter the labour market. This study focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of ERP from the perspectives of training providers designated by Employee Retraining Board to fulfil the above objective. The evaluation of the ERP is based on how the various ERP courses can meet the training objectives, assessment of training needs, design of the ERP, course evaluation, and follow‐up services conducted by the selected training bodies. The overall effectiveness of ERP is found to be low. The indicators participation rate and job placement rate used by the training bodies tend to provide misleading evaluation results to the ERP.