Page 43 - Learning-while-working-Success-stories-on-workplace-learning-in-Europe

To train or not to train? 37

and informal learning in the working environment. Educational disadvantage
is thus carried over into the workplace, since the low qualified are less likely
to receive any workplace training and to undertake tasks that promote skill
development. The low-skilled have more limited career progression prospects
and reduced opportunities for further education and training throughout their
working life. Older workers and those with low levels of formal education
tend not to participate in learning, confuse lifelong learning with returning to
school, and can be more uncertain about what they would like to learn and
what learning opportunities are available. A critical challenge lies in increasing
the share of poorly qualified groups taking part in in-company training. This
is particularly important, since low-skilled workers may find themselves in
jobs characterised by repetitiveness, with low levels of autonomy and limited
options for learning as they carry out their tasks. This raises an important
question, given that skill upgrading should not only be about increasing
skills, but also about ensuring that these are used in the workplace.
The latest continuing vocational training survey indicates that the most
formalised types of training are preferred when updating staff competences.
Work-based learning, embedded in working tasks, complements more formal
forms of continuing training. Work-based learning is therefore decisive for
maintaining, activating and developing skills, though enterprises may lack
the expertise to transform their working organisation into one that stimulates
learning, and may require external support. A company can be described
as a learning organisation when, in addition to continuing training, it creates
learning opportunities in the way work processes are organised, giving
employees’ the chance to develop professional and social competences.
An essential feature of learning organisations is collaborative work in which
one learns from others, acquiring social, communicative, negotiation and
organisational skills which could be useful for any workplace. The type of
human resources policies and work organisation that companies put into
action can contribute to public agendas for the skill development of the
workforce, or achieve the opposite, by deactivating the capacitate to learn.
A work organisation which fails to provide incentives to learn, coupled with
reiterative work patterns about which there is nothing new to learn, inhibits
learning capacities and, in the long run, has a deskilling effect. Further
consideration of work organisation in enterprises is needed in national and
sectoral strategies for skill development. However, it should not be forgotten
that informal and non-formal learning in the workplace generate a number of
challenges, the most important being the validation of learning outcomes.