Job Competencies Certification Project

The project in Chile set out to lay the institutional and methodological foundations for developing a national system of skills standards certification, through the implementation of pilot projects in the mining, construction, and tourism sectors. The sectors were selected because they are highly sensitive to quality problems in the product or service they supply. For each sector involved, the project developed and tested standards for priority job functions, evaluation instruments, and certification processes. In addition, the project design called for the dissemination of pilot results and design of a proposed national system. The project had a three year time frame and is being completed within that period.

Implementation of the project was organized around two pilots, one in the mining sector and the other in the tourism and construction sectors. The mining sector pilot involved strong leadership from the business association and included involvement of labor representatives. Participating companies, which included the largest mining companies in Chile, are contributing hard resources to the project and are adapting standards certification into their human resources management strategies. In the case of the other two sectors, activities were implemented under a joint pilot named Cero Falta (Zero Fault). This pilot took on a somewhat different focus since the public sector became involved when it provided funding to expand the reach of the pilot.

The executing agency of the project is the Fundación Chile, an autonomous private nonprofit organization. For each pilot, the Fundación staff worked with representatives from business associations. The project coordinated closely with the National Training and Employment Service (SENCE). Business associations participated actively in the technical committees overseeing the sector pilots.

In the case of Chile, the project was responding to industry needs to enhance worker competitiveness in the context of the country’s increasingly open economy. One of the key problems in the labor market was the information asymmetries between workers and firms that led to high transaction costs as well as entry barriers that affect worker mobility. Given the stage of development of Chile’s economy, improvement of the quality and competitiveness of the country’s human resources was identified as the critical factor for the country to continue growing and maintain pace with global competition. The initial impetus for the project came from the private sector rather than from a public policy initiative. Fundación Chile approached the MIF directly for support of this skills standards project.

Chile has produced 271 standards. Through the pilots, a total of 3,697 people were evaluated based on skills standards, with about 1,400 of these passing the tests and receiving their certification. In the case of the mining sector, the management and labor of the participating companies have taken an active interest in the project and the use of standards and certification is becoming integrated into the existing human resources development processes within the companies. In the case of the company Codelco, evaluation and certification was used in the recruitment of workers for a new operation.

The other pilot, Cero Falta, gained government interest because it saw certification as a means of increasing worker qualifications and marketability in the face of rising unemployment. Additionally, the gas workers within the construction sector were of particular interest given the high level of accidents within that sector. The workers that were evaluated and certified under Cero Falta were identified individually by certification organizations and the cost of the certification was covered by the project. So in this case, although employers and business associations did actively participate in the standards committee, the pilots were not enterprise-based and did not develop industry ownership in the same way as the mining sector pilot.

While the Fundación Chile was implementing its pilots and promoting skills standards, the interest in standards certification grew throughout the country and the topic was moved to the top of the public policy agenda. Discussed in more detail in the Section on impacts, there are two major public policy initiatives currently underway in Chile that are promoting the national skills standards system, including the development of a law that would set the parameters for the system. In addition, other sectors have approached the Fundación Chile expressing an interest in the program, including information technology, logistics, and agricultural sectors.

Since Chile is now in the midst of negotiations on the development of the national system, the key challenge is to establish a system that manages the appropriate balance of public and private sector support that can maintain and increase the use of the system in the marketplace. While the push of standards onto the national agenda presents obvious opportunities, it also presents challenges since it took place before the experience of the pilots was complete. Nevertheless, the Fundación’s expertise and its experience with the pilots is being incorporated into the debate. Specific political challenges including differences among business associations on certain key aspects of the system are currently being sorted out.

In terms of execution of the project a key challenge was to create a supply of evaluation entities. The Fundación Chile reached out to universities and provided training to assist the universities in establishing themselves as evaluators. In the future, the system will work with a broader range of evaluators, including organizations who have experience evaluating products through ISO 9000.

A unique aspect of the model that was applied in Chile was that it did not include training components but focused only on the development of standards and certification. While this did ensure the project maintained an orientation to labor certification, it posed challenges since the certification process can highlight needs for additional training. In the case of Cero Falta, SENCE provided training for some participants but not all, and therefore those workers who did not pass the first phase of the evaluation process were not provided any type of assistance. A proper link between evaluation, certification, and training needed to be developed. This is in line with the long term goal for standards systems in which certification would be used as one element of a comprehensive human resources development strategy.

Another challenge in project execution was the process of implementing the on-site evaluation of workers. While methodologically important to include practical tests of a worker’s competencies, geographic barriers as well as work processes within certain companies create challenges for smooth and cost-efficient implementation of this methodology.

EMP/SKILLS - Skills and Employability Department