How to successfully engage employers in skills development interventions?
How to better engage employers in skills development is currently a hot topic in countries around the world. As governments struggle to meet the increasing demand for skills training, many are looking to employers to help them increase their capacity and guarantee that the skills developed will be those in demand in the labour market. How can employers engage in a meaningful way and have a real impact? And how should employer engagement best be approached in the context of aid-funded skills programmes?
This question is the subject of a new report published by the UKAid-funded Skills for Prosperity (S4P) programme. To answer it, the authors Muriel Dunbar and Moira McKerracher have taken a two-pronged approach. Firstly, they have looked at existing literature on the subject and found examples of successful initiatives — and not so successful ones — to identify lessons which can be learned from them. These are accompanied by links to many practical tools and “how-to” guides which can be easily used or adapted to improve the quality of employer engagement. Secondly, they have looked at the S4P projects across the nine participating countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, to see how employers are being engaged in their delivery and identify examples of good practice.
Three success stories from S4P
Among the many examples of good practice, three that emerged from S4P are closely examined in the report.
In Malaysia, Skills for Prosperity has been working with employer-led, sector bodies in the construction and food processing industries, to analyse current and future skills demand and supply. This provides the basis for developing sector skills strategies using the International Labour Organization’s foresight method Skills for Trade and Economic Diversification (STED). STED helps to align skill policies with sectoral strategies that contribute to export growth, economic diversification, and employment creation. This also provides the basis for piloting related training programmes in the states of Sabah and Kedah, which will target marginalised groups and those in the lowest 40% socio-economic bracket.
Meanwhile, in Nigeria, the S4P team has been working to overcome the challenge of relatively low employer participation in the national apprenticeship scheme. S4P has collaborated with the government to make the national apprenticeship scheme an integral part of the Nigerian Skills Qualification Framework. This is expected to attract greater interest from employers in recruiting apprentices and open up career pathways for them when they are qualified. Importantly, this work was preceded by the development of a private sector engagement strategy which gives employer engagement the significance it deserves and ensures a structured and systematic approach to any initiatives. This is an important lesson for others who wish to maximise the impact of employers’ involvement in skills development.
In South Africa, S4P’s High Gear project is working in the automotive manufacturing industry to provide learning pathways into decent jobs for young people. Automotive manufacturing has been chosen as it is the country’s highest value export sector, and yet employers struggle to recruit people with the right skills. High Gear has recognised the untapped potential of industry groups in South Africa to play a skills coordination role and to expand the project approach to other provinces. In addition to employer representative bodies, individual manufacturers such as Smith’s Manufacturing and Lumotech also play a major role.
What works to effectively engage employers in skills development
Many people will question what the incentive is for employers to engage in skills development. The report suggests that they are more likely to get involved in sector skills bodies and the governance of skills development if:
· The skills development system is well managed and clear in its objectives
· Employers can play a meaningful role
· Their voices are listened to and they are able to influence decisions, particularly on funding
· Their role is realistic, not over-ambitious and takes their responsibilities as employers into account
· Bureaucracy is kept to the minimum necessary.
The report also suggests that, both when considering apprenticeships and work experience, sometimes activity can be missing the real “challenge”. For apprenticeships, there is a tendency to put resources into improving the formal system. However, greater impact can be achieved by introducing regulation and quality assurance into informal apprenticeships in micro and small enterprises, which is also where the challenge lies. Similarly, with work experience, the issue is often presented as the reluctance of employers to make placements available. In fact, many of them will willingly take on people for work experience, as they see it as an opportunity to assess learners’ suitability for recruitment. The real challenge is to quality assure the placements to ensure that learners have a rich and varied experience.
Undeniably, employers have an important role to play when it comes to skills development. To ensure they can make their contribution with the greatest impact, governments, employer representative organisations and education institutions must create an enabling environment for skills development. This needs to be based on a genuinely collaborative approach, a shared understanding of the problems to be solved, and the benefits of working together for positive and sustainable solutions.
Download the Skills for Prosperity report ‘The Role of Employer Engagement in Aid-Funded Skills Programmes’ at the link.
