Markus Weißmann, Tobias Roth
Conflict and support during apprenticeship training in Germany: Consequences for apprenticeship success and further employment in the company

31st Annual Workshop Transitions in Youth (TiY), University of Warsaw, September 04th to September 06th, 2024

Dual vocational training, i.e., the combination of on-the-job training in a company and school-based teaching, represents a major gateway to a smooth transition into the labor market in Germany. However, around 25 percent of all training contracts are not successfully completed and not all successful apprentices remain in their training company afterwards. Previous studies have shown that apprentices who terminated their training prematurely often report conflicts within the company and insufficient quality of the training input as reasons. However, these studies do not include the group of successful apprentices for whom conflicts and inadequate training input might also have been an issue. Thus, it remains unclear to what extend conflicts and support influence training success. Theoretically, the consequences of conflict and low quality of training input for training success and further employment in the company are straightforward. Undoubtedly, low-quality training input is detrimental to the learning progress of apprentices and likely decreases their satisfaction with training. However, also conflicts with superiors and co-workers might have such effects. As a result, conflicts and inadequate training input might decrease training performance and thus increase the likelihood of premature training termination. However, to our knowledge, no study has yet appropriately investigated how conflicts and inadequate training input are related to the likelihood of staying in the training company as an employee after training graduation. For such a continuation of work in the company, graduates must first receive and accept such an offer both of which should be less likely if conflicts occurred during training and in companies where trainees do not receive adequate support during training. Using panel data from the Starting Cohort 4 of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS SC4) we address these research gaps. Our results suggest that apprentices who report conflict in the company are substantively less likely to graduate from vocational training, while those who report adequate support and instruction are substantively more likely to graduate. Likewise, conflicts during training reduce the likelihood of successful trainees remaining in the training company afterwards, while the perceived support and instruction increases the likelihood. More detailed analyses suggest that this is rather due to missing employment offers from companies than due to graduates refusing these offers: Among apprenticeship graduates, those who report conflicts receive employment offers less often, while those who perceive support during training more often receive such offers. Once apprentices have received employment offers, differences in conflicts and perceived support are not significantly related to the likelihood of accepting such offers.