Double training begins in Japan

AJobs are a rare commodity in aging Japan. Competition for talent is getting fiercer, especially in the automotive industry. Of the German companies operating in Japan, 82 percent responded in a survey by the Foreign Trade Council that they had difficulty finding qualified workers. BMW Japan and Daimler’s truck subsidiary Mitsubishi Fuso now want to increase their appeal to school leavers with a new idea: two courses based on the German model.

In Japan, it is common for young people to either learn their craft fully in academia or be trained directly in companies – where they often spend their entire working lives. The new training program, which the two companies set up together with the Association of Foreign Trade Companies (AHK) in Japan and two vocational schools in Tokyo and near Osaka, now specifies that the students spend 70 percent of their time working for the company and 30 percent. study at school, and receive a salary from their employers – as usual in Germany.

“Win-Win Situation”

The CEO of BMW Japan, Masatoshi Hasegawa, spoke of a “win-win situation” for companies and training participants when he presented the program with other partners on Thursday. Students learned basic automotive skills and professional skills for the respective company at the same time and could start working as full-time employees immediately after their training. Mitsubishi Fuso’s chairman, Kazuo Matsunaga, praised the time savings as the new training program lasts only three years, instead of the five years of the company’s previous program.

As of April 1, 21 students began their two internships at the two companies. Next year there should be 50, and in the following years there will be 100, said Lucas Witoslawski, who leads the project at AHK. To do this, however, more companies and technical schools will have to win the program. The example is South Korea, where three companies initially started two trainings in 2017. Today, seven companies offer training based on the German model, including BMW, Daimler, Audi and MAN. In total, foreign chambers have already exported the German training model to 48 countries. Imitation, it seems, is clearly needed.