BERLIN, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- Further education in digital subject areas is booming in Germany, a joint-study published on Monday by the German Information Technology Association (Bitkom) and the German Technical Inspection Association (VdTUEV) finds.

According to the study, the share of German companies which are training their staff for digitalization with topical further education courses has risen sharply from 36 percent in 2016 to 63 percent in 2018. The findings were based on a representative study of 504 companies with more than 10 employees conducted by Bitkom and VdTUEV.

"Digital further education is booming. A good qualification and the willingness to continuously gain further qualifications are a guarantor of long-term opportunity in the labor market and enable participation in the digital world," Bitkom president Achim Berg commented on the trend.

Nearly all respondents, 99 percent, polled in the survey agreed that lifelong learning in connection with digitalization was becoming more and more important in the work place. Similarly, 95 percent of companies stated that schooling, vocational training and university studies were no longer sufficient to provide skills for the entirety of a career.

"Employees need the right competences to keep advancing the digital transformation. A modern culture of further education is the key," VdTUEV president Michael Fuebi said at the presentation of the study in Berlin.

"Four out of five respondents (78 percent) believe that digital competences are just as important as professional or social competences. A further 18 percent even think that digital competences are the most important skill of employees," Fuebi noted.

Nevertheless, employees in Germany only had an average of 2.3 working days and corresponding funding allotted to them for further education per year. Fuebi complained that the training budgets were consequently "calculated tightly" and highlighted that every fifth company (21 percent) did not offer any further education to its staff at all. Furthermore, 57 percent of companies still had no overarching strategy for how to imbue digital competences such as the use of computer hardware, software or basic coding.

For Bitkom and VdTUEV, businesses were well-advised to establish a further education culture which enabled lifelong learning and was itself based on a well-funded strategy to provide training in digital skills.

"Digital further education is not a nice-to-have but rather a must," Bitkom president Berg warned. "Smart heads are the most important capital in digital Germany," he added.