Germany's SMEs #3 - Human resources as a driver of innovation

Medium-sized decision-makers have been confronted with some difficult questions over the last three years of crisis: How can the maintenance of the operational business be ensured? How must the company's strategy be adapted? It became apparent that this can often only be answered through future-oriented process, product and business model innovation. 

Probably the most important source of ideas and innovation in a company is its staff. But in order to make profitable use of the innovation engine of personnel and to exploit its potential, it is necessary to develop training programs that not only impart competencies, but also enable employees to actively participate in the development of the company. 

In the study "Deutschlands Mittelstand #3 - Innovationsmotor Personal" by the RKW Competence Center, our Managing Partner and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Oskar Patzelt Foundation Christian Wewezow, together with Prof. Dr. Christina Günther, Dr. Teita Bijedic and Dr. Michael Banf, used an AI-supported text analysis of the questionnaires of companies that reached the jury list of the "Großer Preis des Mittelstandes" in 2022 to investigate the wide range of personnel development measures implemented by small, medium-sized and large companies and the differences that can be identified.

For this purpose, the companies were divided according to their size into small (11-50 employees), medium-sized (51-250 employees) and large companies (>251 employees), and three categories were formed for different forms of continuing education according to their degree of formalization. 

The study made it clear that small and medium-sized enterprises are in no way inferior to large companies. Just like the large SMEs, they use a wide range of training programs and have recognized that staff training is particularly important in times of crisis.

After "Germany's SMEs 2020 - What makes small and medium-sized enterprises successful" and "Germany's SMEs #2 - How small and medium-sized enterprises successfully master crises", this is already the third study by the RKW Competence Center in which our SME expert Christian Wewezow is involved as co-author. 

Would you like to learn more about the study and further training measures in SMEs? Then download the study now free of charge as a PDF on the website of the RKW Kompetenzzentrums !

Picture: © RKW Kompetenzzentrum; iStock – PeopleImages 869651702