Applying for a qualification allowance for employees for further vocational training

If your employees take part in further vocational training, you can receive a training allowance from the Employment Agency as compensation for the duration of the training.

The target group for the qualification allowance are employees who are at risk of losing their jobs due to structural change and for whom further training can, however, enable future-proof employment in the same company.

The basic requirement is that the structural change-related qualification needs of a significant proportion of your workforce have been set out in a company-specific regulation or a collective agreement. A significant proportion of your workforce means 20 percent if you have at least 250 employees and 10 percent if you have fewer than 250 employees. For companies with fewer than 10 employees, a written declaration from the company is sufficient.

The training allowance amounts to 60 percent of the average net pay. This is an amount that is determined with reference to a reference period. If your employees have at least one child, they will receive 67 percent of their average net pay.

• Company agreement or collective agreement
• Declarations of consent from employees

The following requirements must be met:

• The operational requirements are:
  • There are structural change-related qualification requirements in your company and these affect at least 20 percent of employees.
  • You finance continuing vocational training.
  • You have concluded a company agreement or a collective agreement with the company regarding
    • the use of the training allowance.
    • the associated prospects of your employees for long-term employment in the company and
    • the existence of the need for qualification due to structural change,
• The employees in further training must be participating as part of an existing employment relationship, they have not taken part in any further vocational training funded under this provision in the 4 years prior to submitting their application and their employment relationship has not been terminated or dissolved by a termination agreement.
• Further requirements are:
  • Skills, knowledge and abilities are imparted that go beyond exclusively job-related short-term adaptation training.
  • The provider of the measure is approved for funding.
  • The measure comprises more than 120 hours and has the maximum duration of a full-time measure. A full-time measure is defined in Section 180 (4) of the Third Book of the German Social Code (SGB III).

• Contradiction

As an employer, you can apply to the Employment Agency for the qualification allowance for all employees who take part in a further training measure

• Download the application, the list of employees and the payroll list and complete the documents.
• Upload the documents via the Employment Agency's eService. You must also attach a declaration of consent from all employees participating in the training.
• The Employment Agency will check the documents. The employment agency can inspect the relevant documents, for example wage or salary statements, documents relating to measures, vacation requests and similar.
• The employment agency will inform you of its decision on your application.
• If you receive training allowance, you will pay this to the relevant employees.

As the employer, you bear the costs of the training. There are no costs for the employees.

There are no indications / special features.