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This study begins from the premise that smaller employers provide less formal training than larger companies and are less likely to participate in government training initiatives. The study has a number of objectives: to understand the issues small employers face in making decisions about training; to examine training provision for owner-managers, new recruits and established employees; to guage the importance of formal and informal training; to identify employers' motives to provide training; and to assess whether small businesses' informal training can be assessed more formally than at present. The first stage of the study provides quantitative data on a sufficiently large sample to be able to generalise the findings to the broader population. The second stage provides qualitative data on employers' definitions of training, their motives for undertaking training and the barriers to providing training. The report also suggests implications for future policy.