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By Sonya Rabbitte, 26 July 2001 18:59

NEWS Workers in European resellers would prefer better in-house training to higher salaries, but the vast majority of them say the vendors they sell for should pay for it. In an IDC survey commissioned by HP, workers in the channel cited quality and availability of training as the main criteria for job satisfaction, with levels of responsibility and clear career progression ranking second and third. Higher remuneration was midway down the list, at number five. Reseller staff gave a thumbs up to training, but said they were not getting enough. Overall 68 per cent of respondents said individual vendors should pay for their product training, suggesting reseller companies are failing to train their own staff adequately. In Italy over 80 per cent of respondents felt resellers should not meet the cost of training. Nearly two thirds of the 440 sales and technical staff interviewed in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the UK demanded more training on internet solutions, but just over one third considered training in mobile technology to be important. The findings, carried out by HP's European training and certification division, suggests that reseller staff feel major vendors are letting them down. But others disagree. According to Mark Kennedy, channel manager with SharpOWL, a maker of automated software systems for professional services industries, most vendors already provide in-house product training, and suitably qualified reseller staff should not require additional technical training. He said: "We stipulate that reseller staff have to have certain levels of technical training already so we don't have to provide that training. The onus is on the reseller to hire staff capable of doing the job in the first place." Manny Pinon, sales director with IT equipment distributor, Norwood Adams, agrees that vendors are not at fault. He said: "The problem is that many resellers are small companies and they are thinking of their bottom line. They're often unwilling to give up the staff time required for extra training." IDC estimates there is an IT skills deficit of one million people in Europe which is set to double by 2003.