German companies are investing in the know-how of their employees. As was found out in the course of a study carried out by the Institute for the German Economy (IW) in Cologne on further training in Germany, almost 84% of all German businesses provided further professional training to their employees in the year 2007. Among businesses with at least 250 employees this percentage amounted to 96%. In total, German businesses invested about 27 billion Euros in further training.
Thus, on average they invested 1053 Euros per employee being subject to social insurance payments. 419 Euros of this sum were direct costs paid for coach salaries, study course or participation fees, travel expenses, rents and teaching material. In addition they paid 635 Euros for indirect costs caused by the absence of an employee from his workplace during the training.
In order to prepare their employees for new tasks, most companies (79%) used exhibitions or seminars, training on the job as well as self-training. 76% of businesses offered seminars or training courses.
More information and results of the above study can be gathered from “IW-Trends 1/2009” which is available for free-of-charge download. 