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Learning while working
36 Success stories on workplace learning in Europe

including elementary. To meet emerging challenges in working life, the adult
population must have opportunities to develop continuously knowledge and
skills, in the broadest possible sense. Apart from upgrading occupation-specific
skills, workers need to expand their transversal skills, including communication,
self-management, team working, the capacity to be creative and take initiative,
and the ability to keep on learning.
However, company training seems to be largely focused on the daily
implementation of working tasks and processes, and not on strengthening
employee competences for further learning and employability. Training tends
to be reactive, ad hoc, tailor-made and narrowly defined, with limited or no
relevance beyond one particular company. Many technical competences have
value only for the specific enterprise in which they were acquired and cannot
be transferred between employers, whereas transversal competences, such
as problem-solving, can be transported to other work settings. Fearing that
newly trained employees may be recruited by other companies, employers
may invest in firm-specific training or even avoid investing in training altogether,
in sectors where skills can be easily transferred to other enterprises. A recent
analysis of policy initiatives that support the acquisition of key skills in the
workplace suggests that employers are principally after the ‘right skills’, and
are not as focused as policy-makers on qualifications and raising worker levels
in formal education (Cedefop, 2010f).

2.5. Conclusions and policy messages

Public policies and company training actions may serve contradictory goals,
with governments wishing to aid the employability and mobility of workers
across enterprises, sectors and eventually occupations, while companies
may concentrate on specific training related to their production needs and
working arrangements. While employers tend to focus their continuing training
and professional development opportunities on the most talented employees,
governments have concentrated their efforts on those segments of the population
more vulnerable in the labour market, such as low-skilled and older workers.
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.
It is sufficiently proven statistically that the likelihood of participation in
continuing education and training increases in line with the qualification
levels. This applies to both formal education and training and to non-formal