Page 36 - Learning-while-working-Success-stories-on-workplace-learning-in-Europe

Learning while working
30 Success stories on workplace learning in Europe

2.3.2. Is the workplace reinforcing learning participation inequalities?
As shown by the Adult education and the Fifth European working conditions
surveys, training provided by employers is unevenly and unequally distributed.
Low-skilled employees receive measurably less training, as do employees in
small firms and in a number of sectors of the economy. Expecting high returns
for investment in training, enterprises tend to concentrate on employees
who are already highly qualified or those who may assume a technical or a
supervisory role in the enterprise; at the same time, they neglect low-qualified,
older employees and part-time or in temporary contracts workers.
The incidence of training declines with age, which partly reflects shorter
expected pay-back periods on training investments for older workers as well
as their lower average education attainment (OECD, 2006). The term older
workers should nevertheless be used carefully since it embraces a broad
variety of age groups, starting from the age of 45 to retirement, diverse
education levels, as well as life and work experiences. It is, nevertheless,
accurate to say that older workers face cumulative disadvantages, in particular,
when they possess a low level of formal education, since they participate less
in lifelong learning and they are less likely to be offered learning opportunities
in the workplace (Cedefop, 2008h, p. 86). Employers would tend to invest
less in training for workers beyond the age of 45, who bring shorter periods
of return from investment in training, and are deemed to be less flexible and
more reluctant to adapt to changes in work organisation and technological
innovation (OECD, 2006; Cedefop, 2006; Cedefop, 2008i).
Employees in short-term work conditions also have unequal access to
learning in the workplace, since they tend to be excluded from companies’
training provision. In Austria and Germany, specific training programmes,
which combine different sorts of financial incentives, target employees with
short-term contracts, in the context of the present economic downturn.

In Austria, in 2009, short-time work provisions were amended to offer skills enhancement to
workers under short-term contracts. The Austrian public employment service offers assistance
with skill needs assessment to both employers and employees keen to take up this measure.
The social partners must subsequently agree a training concept which will be submitted for
the approval of the employment service together with the application for a short-time work
allowance. Within well-defined quality standards, the training provided must improve overall
employability, not just employee performance in the current job. An allowance covers 60% of
training costs and augments the short-time work wage paid to the individual. This approach
aims to encourage companies to invest in training and retain their employees during the
economic crisis (Cedefop, 2010f).