Well-qualified staff is the be-all and end-all for companies. Continuing education can help to keep employees informed.

Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) - According to a study, short-time work is rarely used for further training in Baden-Württemberg. While almost three out of ten companies in the southwest registered short-time work in the first half of 2021, only seven percent used this time to train their employees, as reported by the Ministry of Economic Affairs in Stuttgart with reference to an analysis by the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IAW). The reasons given for this were a lack of demand or the absence of suitable offers, uncertain business expectations and also insufficient short-time work.

Economics Minister Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut (CDU) called for more commitment from companies on the subject. "We have to make greater use of phases of short-time work in particular in order to acquire core competencies relevant to the future and to keep employees up to date with their knowledge and skills."

According to the IAW analysis commissioned by the ministry, after the corona-related slump in 2020, the further training activity of companies increased again last year. The proportion of companies active in further training was 35 percent in the first half of 2021. This means a slight increase of 3 percentage points after the number of corresponding measures fell sharply in 2020 as a result of the pandemic.