Many employees are retiring and skilled workers are difficult to find. This makes it all the more important for retailers to think about how they train their staff themselves. Suppliers, association groups and of course retailers themselves are concerned with the issue of employee training in the shoe trade. Investments in employee training are not only made in the form of the joint initiative of the association groups, the knowledge world. The reasons for this become clear after the traders’ comments in this issue. On the one hand, many established people from the baby boomer generation will be retiring in the next few years. On the other hand, potential skilled workers are becoming increasingly difficult to find because they also see prospects in other industries. Rosenheim dealer Karl-Georg Reindl says that seven of his long-standing employees will soon be entering retirement age. Andreas Höppner from the Schuhhaus Höppner chain store with its headquarters in Rostock describes that it is becoming increasingly complicated to arouse qualified staff’s interest in working in the shoe trade. The requirements of applicants in terms of pay and working hours are very high.
As the market for experienced workers becomes ever smaller, it is even more important to turn young people who are interested in training and working in the field into skilled workers themselves. There are more offers than ever with which employees can continue their training and develop in various fields. And thanks to flexible and digital formats, these offers can also be easily combined with everyday work. Ideally, a trainee will become a competent full-time employee and, over time, a pillar of the team who pulls the others along and on whom you can simply rely.
This of course brings us to the next challenge: It is no longer as natural as it used to be to stay with a company for 30 or 40 years or even your entire working life. But the characters are different. There are enough people who are happy when they have found a job in which they can prove themselves and are valued. Then these people no longer see any reason to look for anything else. And if it works like this for some of the employees you accompanied on their journey, then the investment has been worth it.
