Slovenia: Employers obligation to provide skill development plans or training

Social partners define additional rules on education in sectoral collective agreements. All 14 collective agreements in the private service sector (analysed in Duh, 2014), for instance, include basic rules on education if the employer refers the worker for education and (less frequently) if the worker undertakes education on the worker’s own initiative. If the employer refers the worker for education, training and further training, generally the costs of such education have to be borne by the employer and the time allotted to education is considered to be working time. Collective agreements also determine paid or unpaid leave, particularly when the worker takes exams for the first time, but the number of paid or unpaid days off varies. Collective agreements may include the employer’s obligation to offer a new job adequate to the worker’s qualifications after the completion of education, particularly if the employer had referred the worker on education. Some collective agreements determine the responsibility of the employee if he or she does not finish education, training or further training successfully and/or sanctions if the worker refuses to undertake education. Certain collective agreements specify some groups of workers (older workers, pregnant women or young mothers) to which the obligation of undertaking education does not apply.

According to the Continuing vocational training survey in 2015, 84.1% of all companies enable their employees to attend internal or external education or training programmes (i.e. actions and activities whose main objective is to acquire new knowledge and skills or develop and improve the existing ones and are at least partially funded by the enterprise for its employees). These results represent an increase of nearly 12% compared to the survey of 2010 (72,3%) (Statistical office of the Republic of Slovenia).