Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Lithuania, since March 2017, has provided the companies with ample opportunities to invest quickly and easily in employee training allowing the employees of the enterprises in Lithuania to adapt faster to changing requirements of the labour market.
Enterprises from different sectors of industry can invest in their employee training, such as specialized certified trainings, trainings related to acquiring highly relevant, but lacking skills: professional foreign language, financial management, export, strategic planning, conflict resolution, stress management, communication, motivation, time planning, using the European Social Fund investment measure Competence voucher (hereinafter referred to as the “Competence voucher”).
A Competence voucher is implemented through a global grant. Under the Competence voucher, the enterprise is granted EUR 4500, which must be used within 12 months to purchase the training services for the employees of the enterprise. This allows the company to plan competence development activities for a specific number of employees according to the training programmes that are needed at that time and arrange the training throughout the validity period of the Competence voucher. Proportions of the reimbursement of training costs: 80% of the training costs will be reimbursed for the micro small, small and medium enterprise and 70% – for large enterprise.
Companies can purchase training services until the 30 November 2020 from the List of Training Providers and Programmes, which is administered by the public body Versli Lietuva (angl. Enterprise Lithuania) and is available on its website. According to the data of December 2017, more than 50 providers offering 374 training programmes, are already on the list. The list is constantly updated.
Training services for enterprises may be provided by providers of formal education, providers of non-formal education, as well as companies and organizations entitled to conduct training programmes designed to work with the products of a particular manufacturer, product technology, equipment, hardware or software.
If the desired training programme cannot be found on the list, employers have the opportunity to apply to the training services provider from the list and the training programme prepared by it will be able to be included on the aforementioned list in a few days.
According to the data of December 2017, 17 enterprises have already benefited from the Competence voucher possibilities with the total sum of investment of EUR 102 321,42 to employee trainings.
In total, under the Competence voucher measure, the total European Union investments of EUR 48,8 million is planned to be made from 2014 to 2020.
ReferNet Lithuania