Deducting money from employees for training

[Big_M]

I work for a small construction company and we now have to ensure that all our site based employees are fully trained in Health & Safety issues and obtain a CSCS card.

Now this costs us a fair bit of money to provide a new recruit with the training and it is very frustrating when you have paid for them to be trained externally for them to leave a few weeks later.

In this instance are we allowed to seek reimbursement from the employee for the cost of their training should they leave within say, three months? Obviously we would need to advise them of this in their offer letter - is there a set wording we should use?

[bga]

Clawback clauses are quite common, many firms who sponsor employees to go through training use these.
I can't help with wording though as Missus (HR bod) is off work sick. If nothing comes up in next few days from another PHer I will try to get example that is used by large accountancy firm who regularly uses this when she is back at work.

[dans]

We have a training agreement with staff which they have to sign before getting any company training. it requires them to pay back a twelfth of the cost of training for every month less than a year they stay with the comapny after they complete the training.

~It is a win win system, it concentrates the mind, gets well trained staff and usually means staff stay and think about staying before accepting training. you could always change the timescale to better suit your industry.

[steviebee]

Yes, you are allowed to reclaim training costs but it has to be explained in the Contract of Employement, signed by the employee - otherwise you can't do so.

Most common is to scale the claw back, i.e; 100% of the fee if departing within one month of the training, 90% within two, etc.