Page 60 - increasing-the-value-of-age-guidance-in-employers-age-management-strategies

Increasing the value of age: guidance in employers’ age management strategies

One concrete example of coordination challenges comes from France,
where guidance encompasses various services and many providers across the
country. This generates enormous institutional complexity: not only is the system
strongly segmented in groups of users (young people, employees, job seekers),
but it is also not uniformly decentralised, with variation in the way national and
regional authorities are involved. Many public decision-making instances and
levels responsible for guidance in France appear as an obstacle and many public
and semi-public organisations, private organisations and associations of all kinds
appeared over the past 20 years as guidance providers.
Another example is the Netherlands, where career guidance is quite
commercialised and decentralised. This process of decentralisation and market
orientation has resulted in four types of providers: the education system; other
government services; employers and trade unions; and private-sector
organisations. This fragmented system is largely composed of disconnected
activities, in which there is low accountability and it is difficult to establish
monitoring and quality assurance. The government role also becomes unclear
within such a system.
Frequently there is also limited cooperation between different actors at
central level. For example, the institutional system of vocational guidance in
Poland separates education from labour, making cooperation between the
ministries responsible for both areas rather difficult. Such examples of difficult
inter-ministerial cooperation are frequent across Europe.
One of the main initiatives to overcome this has been the establishment of
lifelong guidance forums (Cedefop, 2008b) across Europe, to achieve greater
coordination between relevant stakeholders. Frequently these forums start with
joint initiatives, at central level, of the Ministries of Education and
Labour/Employment.
The forums may also be formed with a bottom-up logic, starting with the
participation of users and direct providers in defining policy. This is the case of
the German National Guidance Forum in Education, Career and Employment
which was established as a legal association in 2006.
Another example is the establishment of the Slovenian association for career
guidance in 2009, with the aim to accelerate the development of career guidance
services and to assist guidance professionals in their work and own professional
development. They organise regular meetings, seminars, workshops,
conferences and exchanges.
The UK provides successful examples of coordination in guidance for age
management. The most important contribution is the participation of non-
government organisations, such as Age Concern, the Employers Forum on Age

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