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Education, Work, and Life ChancesLabor Market Policy and Employment

Education, Work, and Life Chances

Research Unit: Labor Market Policy and Employment





Qualification Needs in OECD Countries - Identification, Analysis and Implementation


 

Workshops and Conferences
  17./18.3.2005   Workshop "Actual skills and skill needs within regions: analysis and implementation"
 
      Background:

There is widespread consensus about the key role of human capital to achieve stable employment patterns. Due to this the question arises: What are the most urgently needed skills? Are these skills specific to each region’s economic structure? Calling for higher qualification level is one possibility to answer to the needs of the information society, but this strategy is not only expensive and sometimes inefficient, but also difficult to implement. For this, information about skill needs in labour markets is essential for transparency in competitive economies. In recent years, several countries have increased their attention to the phenomenon that high unemployment and skill shortages may occur jointly. Deeper insight into labour market structures and knowledge about challenges of the future contribute to the fact that public attention to such imbalances has been raised and governments as well as several interest groups including the social partners search for solutions to reduce labour market mismatches.

Organization: > Christoph Hilbert and > Klaus Schömann
further information: > Agenda and abstracts

 
  26. 11. 2004   Conference "The demographic time bomb is ticking"
 
     

Background:
The demographic change has two impacts on the German workforce. It implies an increase of the average age of workers and because of declining birth figures a decrease of the number of workers. Thus, the share of younger employees is decreasing and shortages of skilled labour can occur. Moreover, better qualification of the work force is needed. Even if a higher activity rate of woman and immigration is taken into account, the workforce sinks by 7 Million from 2000 until 2040. The conference combines facts about the development of the labour market with consequences for the operational personnel/organisational structure and the presentation of practiced implementation in companies.

"Top-down“ solutions are the increase of the populations' share of active workers, the enhancement of annual working time, migration and the enhancement of labour participation of females (compatibility of family and job, family-friendly firms), elderly (retirement age, pension, productivity) and juniors (participation in education) and age sensitisation. “Bottom-up” solutions include the following fields of action: productivity (health and capacity), flexibility (motivation and willingness to perform), knowledge (qualification, transfer of experience and know-how) and innovation (attractiveness of companies). Moreover, the promotion of job re-entry, the offering of promotion prospects for every age group (to avoid discouragement), the introduction of health care management, job-rotation for changing exposure, periods for recovering, systems of partial retirement, specific recruitment strategies, heterogeneous-aged working groups, further training  and life-long learning. Important is transparency about necessary development and the adequate steps and the self-responsibility taking for further professional development. Short-term realisable measures are qualification management for all age groups, regular questioning of employees, further training of managers and job-rotation with changing exposure.
 
  30.-31. 05. 2002   Conference "EARLY RECOGNITION OF SKILL REQUIREMENTS IN EUROPE"
 
     

Background:
The necessity and importance of a futureoriented shaping of education and training is broadly acknowledged. However, appropriate policies require sound information on skill requirements in a longer perspective as well as information on new skills and qualification requirements emerging in the course of social and economic change. Numerous approaches have been used in the past decades, ranging from macroeconomic skill forecasts to surveys and enquiries of companies and workers at the micro and meso level. However, though macro approaches are consistent within a given socioeconomic framework and cover the longer term, they provide
no detailed information on specific and on new skill needs. On the other hand, specific results at the micro and meso level cannot always be generalised. Moreover, they refer mainly to the present situation or to requirements foreseeable
in the short and medium term.

These are some of the reasons why European countries are searching for methods, approaches and data which are able to provide suited information on future skill requirements, including requirements for new skills which are not yet provided by education and training systems. This information is highly useful and necessary
for appropriate planning and strategies of vocational education and training. One major initiative to early identify and recognise skill and qualification requirements is being undertaken by a number of German institutions and organisations, promoted by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (IAO). This initiatives combines several approaches and looks at different sectors, groups of people, regions, etc.
Many other countries are also engaged in this field, with however, sometimes different approaches and objectives. At the European level, the European Commission has supported and still supports a number of related projects, particularly in its programmes Leonardo-da-Vinci and Targeted Socio-economic Research (TSER) and their successors.

 

 

  • The conference proceedings have been published in English by Cedefop and by the BMBF in German:

    S.L. Schmidt, K. Schömann, M. Tessaring, eds. Early identification of skill needs in Europe. Cedefop Reference series, Luxembourg: EUR-OP, 2003, no of publication: 2039, catalogue no: TI-49-02-353-EN-C, price: EUR 25;

    Früherkennung von Qualifikationserfordernissen in Europa. Qualifikationen erkennen - Berufe gestalten. H.J. Bullinger, ed., Bielefeld: Bertelsmann, 2003.


 
 
  8.-9.11.2001   Workshop "Skill needs and labour market dynamics"
 
     

Background:
In recent years the demand for high skilled relative to low skilled workers rose in most of the OECD countries. While firms are looking for qualified workers, unemployment rates for low skilled workers do not decline, especially in countries of the European Union. Vacancies cannot be filled in certain sectors of the economy. Those bottlenecks in the supply of labor will very likely have negative impacts on welfare. The workshop wanted to uncover reasons for changes in the demand for labor, possibly indicating future developments. It also dealt with causes of the mismatch on the labor market, and whether and what labor market policies can speed up the adjustment process.

 

 
 
  27.-28.09.2001  

Workshop: "Reacting in time to qualification needs: Towards a cooperative implementation"
 
     

New sectors of the economy are booming (service industry, IT, etc...) that require a trained (wo)manpower. At the same time, new employment forms are developing (part-time jobs, fixed-term contracts, etc...) that can hamper the social and training opportunities of employed persons. To adapt rapidly to these parallel developments, the actors of labour markets are “condemned” to share their expertise and to coordinate their strategies, so as to reduce the costs induced by necessary adaptations of training policies - be they public or corporate organized. The mobilisation of trans-organisational networks can be an adequate device to organise a more responsive implementation of employment and training policies in a rapidly changing economic environment.

The aim of this workshop was to analyse some of those institutional devices, which -  under diverse “labels”- are designed to develop strategies for a quicker adaptation of training systems to the changing qualification needs of people and firms. These arrangements can be described as “policy networks”, as far as they are often informal (that is not hierarchically regulated) and gathering usually scattered policy resources (knowledge and monies) to tackle a common policy issue. We shall explore, in several OECD countries, the way those networks were established and organised, so as their policy objectives, strategies and achievements.
 
  26.-27.10.2000   Deutsch-Französischer Workshop zur Früherkennung von Qualifikationsbedarf
 
     
 



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