What Happens to Your Apprentices When You Sell Your Business?

4 October 2026 · By Reinhard Voelkel

Marker drawing of two aprons on a peg rail above a workbench; an arrow runs from the owner's apron to the copper apron of the employee who will train next

If you sell within the next two years, some of your apprentices will probably still be in training when the new owner takes over. Their contracts will outlive your ownership. For them, that's usually no drama: the contracts stay with the business, and whoever takes over the business takes over the contracts too. In Switzerland, Germany and Austria, the law says so. Elsewhere, check that with whoever oversees apprenticeships where you are.

What doesn't pass on by itself is the right to train, meaning the permission to take on and teach apprentices. In those three countries, it's overseen by an authority, such as a chamber or a training office, that approves or registers each contract. And that authority needs someone in the business who's qualified to train: you, or an employee named to do it. If that someone is only you, the right to train can leave with you. The business can then be barred from taking new apprentices, and the ones halfway through can be left with nobody allowed to finish teaching them. A buyer who spots this tends to lower the price or walk away. One who doesn't finds out after the sale. None of this has to happen if the qualification moves to someone else well before you sell.

Take an invented case: a joinery, meaning a woodworking shop, with 14 people and three apprentices. The owner is 61 and the only person in the building qualified to train. On paper, the workshop trains. In practice, he does.

The sale set against the training cycle

Two years before: count who really trains

Start with three columns on one sheet: who trains each apprentice, which papers (contracts, approvals, trainer certificates) carry the company's name and which carry yours, and when each contract ends. In many small firms, the first column holds one name: the owner's. That changes the plan, because the authority looks at who does the training.

In Switzerland, for example, the canton (the regional government) authorises the company to train. It can withdraw that authorisation if the people who train no longer meet the requirements. What counts as qualified varies. Even in the three countries named above, it ranges from a master craftsman's exam to a trainer exam or a course with a certificate. So the question to put to the authority is simple: if I left tomorrow, who here could be named as trainer?

One year before: make the right to train independent of you

A year out, make two decisions. First, the next apprenticeship contract: who signs it, and who is named as trainer? Second, which employee takes the trainer qualification, so that it stops depending on you? In the joinery, that means the foreman qualifies this year, while the owner is still there to cover.

What happens when the only trainer leaves suddenly differs from place to place. Austria, for example, lets a suitable person already on staff carry on when a trainer leaves unexpectedly. The business must name a qualified trainer within 18 months; if it doesn't, it keeps the apprentices it has and can't take new ones.

A grace period like that is meant for surprises. A sale you've had two years to prepare shouldn't need one, so ask the authority what it allows, and plan as if it allowed nothing.

Gauge with three marks for where the right to train sits: only you, and it can leave with you; one employee qualified, the copper target six months before the sale; several qualified with the papers in the company's name, and it stays when you go. The needle points to only you, where many small firms are today — Where the right to train sits

It's the same work as reducing what depends on you anywhere else in the business, only this time the authority checks it.

Six months before: choose the structure, and have the buyer checked

There are two ways to sell, and they don't touch the apprentices in the same way. In a share deal, the buyer takes over the company's shares, so the employer doesn't change. The contracts stay with the same company, and so does any permission to train it holds. What does change is the person who trains, if that person was you. If the joinery is sold this way, that's the whole change, and it's the one the authority will look at.

In an asset deal, the buyer buys the business itself, not the company's shares. A sole trader, with no shares, has only this option. In the three countries named at the start, the staff move across to the buyer with their contracts, apprentices included. Every contract then has a new employer, and the authority will want to know who that is. Weigh this with the other trade-offs between the two structures.

Either way, the business has to stay allowed to train once you've gone. In an asset deal, that means the buyer must be allowed to train, not only willing to. In Germany, for example, the chamber must be told when the training company changes. It records the change only if the new owner, the trainer and the site are suitable. Before you sign the sale, ask the authority what it will want from the buyer, and how long its check takes.

Two more things belong on the table now. If the buyer plans to move the workshop, get them to say so early, and ask the authority whether the new site needs approving. And if the buyer can't or won't train, find out before you sign what would happen to the apprentices. You'd rather arrange that yourself, calmly, than leave it to an emergency: ask another firm in the trade whether it could take them on.

Six months out is also when the hiring freeze tends to set in. "We're selling soon, let's not take anyone on this year."

Roundabout of the hiring freeze: you enter at we're selling soon, then go round through no apprentice this year, fewer trained hands, the workshop leans on you, harder to sell so the sale waits, and back to the entrance. A car has just passed the only exit, which leads to the workshop: next apprentice signed, an employee as trainer — The hiring freeze that delays the sale

Each year without a new apprentice leaves fewer trained hands, more weight on the owner, and a business that's harder to sell. The way out is unspectacular: sign the next apprentice's contract, with an employee named as trainer.

The day ownership passes

Tell the apprentices yourself, before any letter reaches them. They're usually the youngest in the building and the most tied to one person. Then think about the order in which everyone else hears.

Well before the day, ask the authority whether it needs a new contract, an amended one or a simple notice, so the papers are ready from the first morning. On the day, tell it too.

A year after: exams, and who stays

The apprentice signed a year before the sale is now well into training. Since the contracts came with the business, the buyer carries what you promised them, up to the final exam.

In the sale files I read, apprentices appear as a line in the payroll. The right to train, the trainer's qualification and the trained apprentices who stay on appear nowhere. Yet the buyer gets people who already know how this workshop works, which is what keeping key people through a sale is about.

Back in the joinery, it all comes down to one question. On the day the buyer walks in, who in the building can be named as trainer for the next apprentice?