Continental launches qualification initiative

Con­ti­nen­tal has found­ed an insti­tute for tech­nol­o­gy and trans­for­ma­tion. The pri­ma­ry task of the new insti­tute is the qual­i­fi­ca­tion of all employ­ees in Ger­many. Ini­tial­ly, the focus is on the group of untrained and semi-skilled work­ers, who Con­ti­nen­tal is giv­ing access to fur­ther edu­ca­tion and train­ing pro­grams cer­ti­fied by the Cham­ber of Indus­try and Com­merce. The insti­tute’s ser­vices cov­er Indus­try 4.0, new dri­ve con­cepts and digitalization.

“As elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and dig­i­tal­iza­tion become more wide­spread, sim­ple tasks are being replaced by more com­plex tasks that require train­ing. These changes are far-reach­ing and affect the entire indus­try. Qual­i­fi­ca­tion is there­fore only pos­si­ble through a sen­si­ble shar­ing of the bur­den: law­mak­ers, trade unions and com­pa­nies must all work togeth­er,“ explains Dr. Ari­ane Rein­hart, Exec­u­tive Board mem­ber for Human Rela­tions. “Above all, the employ­ees also need to play their part. Our insti­tute pro­vides the frame­work for self-devel­op­ment and main­tain­ing their employability.”

The com­pa­ny uses the Con­ti­nen­tal Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy and Trans­for­ma­tion (CITT) to active­ly man­age the trans­for­ma­tion process cur­rent­ly tak­ing place across the entire auto­mo­tive indus­try. The insti­tute was designed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Con­ti­nen­tal Cor­po­rate Works Coun­cil, IG Met­all and IG Berg­bau, Chemie, Energie (Met­al, Min­ing, Chem­i­cal and Ener­gy Indus­tries Unions) to secure the long-term employ­a­bil­i­ty of employees.

Qualification only works if employees invest their own time

The pro­ject­ed costs for needs-based qual­i­fi­ca­tion are huge. They include both train­ing costs and costs for lost work­ing hours. “The qual­i­fi­ca­tion of employ­ees is a task of his­toric pro­por­tions. As a com­pa­ny, we bear over­all respon­si­bil­i­ty but can­not imple­ment needs-based qual­i­fi­ca­tion alone. To train only 20 per­cent of our employ­ees in Ger­many for nine months would cost us €1 bil­lion,“ explains Rein­hart. Con­ti­nen­tal is accord­ing­ly call­ing on law­mak­ers, com­pa­nies and, above all, employ­ees to share the costs of the nec­es­sary qual­i­fi­ca­tions. “The Qual­i­fi­ca­tion Oppor­tu­ni­ty Act is the first step. But we also need our employ­ees to be will­ing to change and invest time out­side work­ing hours in their own qualification.“

CITT offers certified further vocational education and training courses

Con­ti­nen­tal is imple­ment­ing a trans­par­ent, selec­tive approach to strate­gic work­force plan­ning to deter­mine the future qual­i­fi­ca­tion require­ments of dif­fer­ent employ­ee groups. Val­i­dat­ed diag­nos­tic pro­ce­dures are used to com­pare the indi­vid­ual skills and abil­i­ties of employ­ees with their future field of activ­i­ty. Fur­ther train­ing is pro­vid­ed wher­ev­er qual­i­fi­ca­tion is required. The insti­tute is ini­tial­ly focus­ing on fur­ther train­ing pro­grams for pro­duc­tion employ­ees. The first mea­sures start in Sep­tem­ber. The qual­i­fi­ca­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties for Indus­try 4.0, new dri­ve con­cepts and dig­i­tal­iza­tion will be grad­u­al­ly extend­ed for the selec­tive fur­ther edu­ca­tion and train­ing of all employ­ees in Ger­many. In order to achieve this objec­tive, the insti­tute is devis­ing an appro­pri­ate qual­i­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy, estab­lish­ing the required pro­gram struc­ture, man­ag­ing the dif­fer­ent train­ing options and ensur­ing stan­dard­ized imple­men­ta­tion at the var­i­ous loca­tions. The qual­i­ty of the train­ing will also be assured by ICC cer­ti­fi­ca­tions and voca­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions. “It was very impor­tant to us to assume respon­si­bil­i­ty at an ear­ly stage. The pur­pose of found­ing the CITT was in the inter­ests of all our employ­ees, to define the frame­work and mea­sures that will secure their future employ­a­bil­i­ty,“ explains Hasan Allak, chair­man of Continental’s cor­po­rate works coun­cil. “Now it’s impor­tant for our employ­ees to show a high degree of will­ing­ness to learn, and proac­tive­ly and inde­pen­dent­ly join in shap­ing their future.”