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What it really costs to train an employee in a large company
The labour cost of training, meaning employees' pay while they are being trained, accounts for 74.6% of course costs in Spanish companies with 250 or more employees, compared with an EU average of 59.3%.
The labour cost of training is the biggest item in any training programme in large Spanish companies, and the one that least often appears in the budget. What goes to providers, platforms and trainers comes with an invoice; attendees' time is paid through payroll and is rarely counted as a training expense.
In this article we give the official figures for that split, a method for calculating how many paid hours each hour of useful learning consumes, and the effect each format decision has on that number.
Eurostat's continuing vocational training survey splits course costs into two blocks: direct costs (providers, trainers, premises, travel) and the labour cost of participants, which is the pay the company keeps paying while its staff are in training.
| Companies with 250+ employees | Spain 2015 | Spain 2020 | EU-27 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct costs per participant | 343 euros | 148 euros | 595 euros |
| Labour cost of participants | 654 euros | 434 euros | 868 euros |
| Labour cost share of the total | 65.6% | 74.6% | 59.3% |
In 2020, participants' labour cost made up 74.6% of course costs in large Spanish companies, compared with an EU average of 59.3%.¹ The share is calculated over direct costs plus labour cost, excluding contributions to training funds.
The 2020 figure should be read with caution: it was the lockdown year, and training hours per participant in large Spanish companies fell from 21.6 to 8.9. In 2015, a year without that distortion, labour cost was already 65.6% of the total. The survey's 2025 wave has no published data yet.
When labour cost exceeds two thirds of the total, cutting the price of training content by 20% lowers total cost by less than 7%. Reducing the hours each attendee loses to training has an effect several times larger on the same budget.
The total labour cost of one effective working hour in Spain was 26.18 euros in the second quarter of 2026, according to Spain's National Statistics Institute (INE).² With that figure you can calculate the ratio that best sums up a format's efficiency: how many paid hours each hour in which someone learns something new actually consumes.
Calculation scenario: a plant trains 200 operators in a two-hour in-person session on an updated procedure.
| Item | Hours per person | Total hours |
|---|---|---|
| Session | 2.0 | 400 |
| Walking to the room and back to the workstation | 0.5 | 100 |
| Waiting for the group to start | 0.25 | 50 |
| Total paid hours | 2.75 | 550 |
| Content they already knew (assumption: 30% of the session) | 0.6 | 120 |
| Hours of useful learning | 1.4 | 280 |
In this scenario, each hour of useful learning costs 1.96 paid hours: 550 hours, around 14,400 euros at the INE average cost, for 280 hours of real learning. The travel, waiting and already-known figures are assumptions each company should replace with its own; the structure of the calculation stays the same.
If the shift is covered with paid overtime while the team is in the room, the cost rises further. Spain's Workers' Statute states that overtime can't be paid below the value of an ordinary hour,³ so covering the 400 session hours with overtime raises the labour cost of training to at least 950 paid hours, more than three times the hours of useful learning.
This calculation only measures the time of the people being trained. The time of whoever delivers the training is a separate item, which we analyse in the cost of delegating training to key people.
None of these levers requires spending more on content. Each one removes a specific line from the table above, so each can be quantified with the same scenario.
If training is consulted at the workstation, at the moment it's needed, travel and waiting disappear. In the scenario, that's 150 of the 550 paid hours: 27% of the session's labour cost.
A short test before the session lets veterans skip the modules they've mastered. In the scenario, it recovers the 120 hours of already-known content. It's the lever that pays off most in long-tenured workforces, and the one applied least.
Practice needs the team in the same place and someone to correct them; theory doesn't. Moving the theory out of the in-person session cuts room hours and, with them, the shift hours that need covering.
A two-hour session means stopping or covering a shift. Six twenty-minute pieces fit into the downtime of a normal week: the learning hours are the same, but the cover cost disappears.
Applied together, levers 1 and 2 take the scenario from 550 to 280 paid hours, with a ratio close to one. In training organised by Spanish companies, 62.1% of participants in 2025 were still trained in person, with an average duration of 9.3 hours.⁴ Platforms like Vidext work on levers 1 and 4; lever 2 is a design decision any team can apply without changing tools.
The training budget that reaches leadership usually includes only the line item with an invoice. A complete proposal presents three lines together:
The third line turns a price discussion into a productivity one, which is usually what moves the decision. We cover the other metrics for defending the programme to finance in how to measure training ROI to present to the CFO.
Companies negotiate hard on the part of training that comes with an invoice and leave unmeasured the part paid through payroll, which in large Spanish companies is by far the bigger one. No discount from a provider makes up for a session where half the paid time doesn't go into learning. The question worth taking to the next budget isn't how much the course costs, but how many workforce hours each hour that genuinely teaches something consumes.
According to Eurostat's continuing vocational training survey, in Spanish companies with 250 or more employees the labour cost of participants was 74.6% of course costs in 2020 and 65.6% in 2015, excluding contributions to training funds. The EU average was 59.3% in 2020.
Multiply attendees' paid hours (session, travel and waiting) by the company's labour cost per hour. For reference, total labour cost per effective hour in Spain was 26.18 euros in the second quarter of 2026, according to INE: 27.95 in industry, 26.06 in services and 23.92 in construction.
No. FUNDAE credit applies to the cost of the training activity, not to the pay for the hours employees spend training. That cost is always borne by the company.
¹ Eurostat, Continuing Vocational Training Survey, cost of CVT courses per participant by type of cost and size class (trng_cvt_19s) ² INE, Quarterly Labour Cost Survey, second quarter of 2026 ³ Workers' Statute, Article 35.1 (BOE) ⁴ FUNDAE, Balance de situación 2025
Programme to promote permanent employment of qualified young people within the framework of the National Youth Guarantee System. Vidext has received a grant of €25,401 awarded by LABORA (Valencian Employment and Training Service) for the permanent hiring in 2024 of qualified young person(s) registered in the National Youth Guarantee System, an action eligible for co-financing by the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) 2021-2027 or any other European Union fund. Expediente ECOGJU/2024/550/46. This publication is made in compliance with the transparency obligations established by Spanish Law 19/2013 of 9 December.
