Pilot Skills Standards and Certification Project

The MIF project in Mexico is the earliest of the six skills standards projects reviewed for this study. The project funded technical assistance to develop a comprehensive methodology and build market buy-in to the standards and certification process through industry-specific pilots led by companies who piloted the use of standards within their workplaces. A total of 13 pilot projects were implemented. The intent was for each pilot to include the development and testing of standards for job functions identified as priorities by the sector, training with standards-based curriculum, and application of performance tests, as well as the dissemination of the pilot experience within the sector. In addition, the project financed activities in the construction sector specifically aimed at occupational health and safety. The project had a 36 month execution period that was extended by an additional 18 months.

The executing agency for the project is the national skills standards board, the Consejo de Normalización y Certificación de Competencia Laboral (CONOCER), a body that had recently been established when the MIF project began. CONOCER’s board has management, labor, and government representation, with a majority of seats held by the private sector. For each pilot, committees were established that sought representation from business associations, labor unions, and training providers. In practice, the company-based pilots were managed separately from the sectoral committees, with separate reporting structures within CONOCER since the company-based pilot was financed by the MIF and the sectoral committees by the World Bank.

In Mexico, the development of skills standards was part of a public policy effort aimed at enhancing the competitiveness of the Mexican workforce by improving the quality, relevance and flexibility of technical training and education, within the context of NAFTA. In 1993, the Secretaries of Labor and Education jointly undertook a project of modernization of technical education and training. A general education law passed in 1993 authorized the establishment of a labor certification system. In 1995, the government established CONOCER with support from a World Bank loan, with the intention of creating a national framework for a skills standards certification system and building private sector demand for the system. MIF funding responded to the need to link these efforts more directly with the private sector and build experience and ownership of the process within productive sectors.

In Mexico, the combination of the MIF pilot and World Bank-financed project have resulted in the establishment of the institutional framework and infrastructure for the system, under the auspices of CONOCER. Detailed methodology has been documented for each phase of the process from standards identification and validation to certification. A total of 538 standards have been developed. Thirty-two certification agencies and 870 evaluation centers have been accredited and are selling their services to the private market. Evaluation centers are so numerous under the Mexican model because companies could develop their own in-house evaluation centers, thus enhancing the integration of standards into the human resources management processes of a company and reducing costs.

Approximately 128,000 competencies have been certified, representing about 42,000 certified individuals since on average workers are certified in 3 competencies. The standards developed by CONOCER have been used by the technical education system as part of the modernization process and the shift toward competency-based training.

The specific MIF-financed pilots had been implemented to 75% of anticipated goals by the end of the project. All pilots developed standards but training was only 77% completed and evaluation 70%. These averages reflect that some pilots achieved implementation of all phases, while others achieved relatively little, primarily in the phase of evaluation of workers.

Several companies that participated in the pilots have adapted the use of standards. Two of the best cases are the hotel chain Grupo Posadas and the food company, Bimbo. In Grupo Posadas, the manager of the specific hotel that implemented the pilot reported that his hotel had experienced significant improvements in customer satisfaction that he attributed directly to the modification of the hotel’s internal training system to integrate the skills standards developed in the pilot. Grupo Posadas also used the evaluation of workers based on standards during its recruitment process when it opened a new hotel. In the case of Bimbo, the company has gone beyond the CONOCER pilot to develop additional standards and plans to implement standards-based training and certification of workers throughout the company’s many locations. Other companies have also taken an active interest in standards certification, including the state-owned electricity company (Comisión Federal de Electricidad or CFE), which is currently developing standards and plans to certify it’s 80,000 workers on an ongoing basis.

Mexico is now past its pilot phase and is implementing the system on a national level. The key challenge facing the Mexican system is the ability of CONOCER to increase adoption of the system by the market. Even though the MIF enterprise-based pilots were aimed specifically at increasing the private sector leadership of the process, in practice the process was still very driven by CONOCER and the technical experts it provided. While some specific companies that participated in the pilots were very satisfied with their participation and are adopting standards and certification within their companies, there has been less penetration into sectors as a whole than expected. The link between company-based pilots and sectoral committees was not as strong as planned in the project design. Overall, the number of competencies certified has not been growing. It reached approximately 58,000 between 1998-2000. In 2001, 47,000 competencies were certified. But as of August 2002, only 28,000 had been certified.

Problems confronted by CONOCER in its 13 MIF pilots reflect some of the larger issues facing the Mexican system. Many employers and workers involved in the process found the process difficult to understand and the norms themselves difficult to read because of the wording required by the methodology. The CONOCER model uses the most highly structured methodology of the projects supported by the MIF. It is based largely on the model used in the United Kingdom. In theory, the methodology is sound, and possibly produces the most accurate description of what the competencies should be for any given job function. However, the process is long and complex in the perspective of companies. In the UK, the process has also been driven by the public sector.

These problems were epitomized in one pilot project in which a participating company initiated its own separate process developing standards in parallel to its participation in the CONOCER pilot. In sharp contrast to the CONOCER pilot, the other efforts within the company were implemented very quickly and the resulting standard was a brief document. The company gave its support to the simpler process rather than the one led by CONOCER.

As a result of feedback from the pilots, CONOCER has been simplifying the methodology somewhat and is developing user-friendly manuals to accompany standards. CONOCER continues to promote the standards certification system and is targeting specific companies and sectors to adapt certification. But the institutional status of CONOCER is currently under debate and will be changed in the near future. The current government administration determined that there were inconsistencies between CONOCER’s operations and its legal structure as a trust (fideicomiso). Its new structure is likely to be more closely associated with the Ministry of Labor and might lose the private sector control of the Board. The implications of this change for the system is not yet clear, but the change demonstrates that the system in Mexico is thus far primarily driven by the public sector, with insufficient industry ownership built up through the pilots as to push for a more private sector institutional structure at this stage.

EMP/SKILLS - Skills and Employability Department