Less common than other types for production employees, individual ALT obtained outside the company meets a need of certain individuals for personal and professional development. The tendency in Quebec is to support individual training received outside, principally in the case of more qualified staff and managers. However, learning opportunities of this kind may also be provided to enable less qualified employees to obtain basic general training.
Firms respond differently to this need. Some of the organizations studied by Bélanger et al. (2004) have policies that encourage employees to take courses in recognized institutions — CEGEPs and universities being the preferred locations for this. Thus, in some cases, course fees and the cost of educational materials are reimbursed in whole or in part, and employees receive time off to compensate for the time devoted to training. Where financial support is provided, the approval of a superior is required ahead of time. Bélanger et al (2004) note that these incentives are not present in all companies and that in those that do offer them, some senior or junior managers resist the temporary reduction in the workforce. Among the courses for which fees are reimbursed, a small number of the companies studied favour education that is not work-related such as courses promoting personal development and physical fitness.
The firms observed by Bélanger et al. (2004) that recognize and encourage individual training taken outside the company feel that these ALT activities contribute to the success of the company. In other companies, this kind of ALT is tolerated, if not valued, and certain concessions are made, such as allowing employees to leave work early in order to attend courses (up to an hour of work at the end of the day).
ALT for management in Quebec, as in other advanced industrial societies, is developing in response to the demand created by the challenges of reorganizing management and human resources, expansion or the need to adapt to new technologies. Many types of additional ALT activities required or requested by various managers can be added to these responses: refresher education in accounting and the pay system, introduction to a new time-recording technique in human resources management, etc. Some firms tend to give priority to ALT for management. In fact, in one case observed by Bélanger et al. (2004), a head office invested a great deal in the education and training of its managers, so much so that this constituted one-half of the company's ALT activities.
The progress made in the 1970s in this area in Quebec, and the explosion of managerial literature at that time transformed the education and training of managers. Since then, however, executive and managerial ALT in Quebec has tended to remain conventional in both form and goals.