Managing complex high-tech machines, working with the latest office software, collaborating between different teams across borders and locations – in order to stay current in professional life, many employees have completed further training in the last 2 years. For example, 40% of employed people used additional training opportunities to improve their digital skills in the last 24 months. 19 percent also or instead used additional training offers without a digital connection. These are the results of a representative survey commissioned by the digital association Bitkom.
“Digitalisation is changing job skills profiles and career paths. The typical curriculum vitae – school, training or education and then 40 years in the same job – is a thing of the past for most employees,” says Leah Schrimpf, Education Policy Officer at Bitkom. “Further education is the key to the future of work in the digital world.” The reasons for further training in digital skills are varied among the employed persons interviewed. Nearly half of those who have completed appropriate training want to use it to enhance their career prospects within their company or organization (49%).
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45 percent want to improve their salary, and for a quarter (27 percent) such continuing education offers have been explicitly recommended by their employer. 16 percent are even obligated by their employer to take advantage of corresponding offers – and for just as many, employers bear the costs for digital continuing education offers. Half (50 percent) also said in the survey that they have not used further training offers or those without a digital connection in the past two years. The most common reasons given are insufficient time (29%), sufficient digital skills (28%) or lack of funding from employers (26%).
“It is important that existing state funding for continuing education is more open to digital continuing education concepts at all levels, even beyond formal education, in order to enable low-threshold access,” emphasizes Schrimpf. “Securing digital education in the long term must be a common interest of business and politics.” Digital skills are in demand almost everywhere: only 3% of those who have not undergone adequate continuing education do not know how digital skills would help them in their jobs.