Page 15 - Learning-while-working-Success-stories-on-workplace-learning-in-Europe

Executive summary 9

for workforce skill development or can do the opposite, by deactivating workers’
capacity to learn. Further consideration of work organisation in enterprises
needs to be taken in national and sectoral strategies for skill development.
Unions have also a role in developing a culture of lifelong learning in the
workplace, by identifying, together with employers, skill shortages and training
needs, at company and sectoral level, and helping workers develop transferable
skills to increase employability or readiness to progress or change position
within their current employment. Unions can develop guidance and learning
services to help their members deal with sectoral and organisational change,
anticipate redundancy or plan for retirement. Although unions have understood
that skill development and career guidance could be a way to renew their
constituencies and attract new members, maintaining the employability of their
members through skill development is not yet part of the bargaining agenda
in all European countries.
Public policies on adult learning and company training actions may serve
contradictory goals, where governments aim at aiding, through continuing
training, the employability and mobility of workers across enterprises, sectors
and eventually occupations, while companies tend to focus on higher ranking
employees and on very specific training needs related to work processes.
Conflicting agendas between company training plans and government priorities
might be doing a disservice to ‘middle-skilled’ workers who also need to
plan their career progression with reference to future skill demands. Apart
from upgrading occupation-specific skills, workers need to expand their key
competences, including communication, self-management, team working, the
capacity to be creative and take initiative, and the ability to keep on learning
and manage change.
Subsidies for continuing training and exhortations to employers to train more
may not be sufficient to increase the share of enterprises providing training.
Lack of awareness on training needs is, at present, a fundamental barrier
to skill development in enterprises, which will need to be counteracted by
appropriate policy measures. Expanding financial incentives and diversifying
training provision will have limited effect on enterprise training behaviour, if they
are not accompanied by adequate support to assess skills needs, at enterprise
and sector level, and awareness raising activities on returns on investment in
training. Further, it is when enterprises deliver new products or services, adopt
new technology, production methods and working processes or transform work
organisation that the need for training arises. Given that the introduction of
innovation in enterprises and skill development reinforce one another, innovation
policies and training agendas should be brought together.