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Last update:
26/09/2007

This section aims at displaying the participation scheme of employers' organisations within the framework of vocational training institutionality in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Although employers' organisations have participated in vocational training's institutionality in the region for a long time, their role in the field of training and development of human resources has no doubt promoted the advent of the so-called knowledge society and the prominent role knowledge has in today's world of production of goods and services.(1)

Many reasons have led employers' organisations to participate actively and commit themselves to the planning, management, execution and assessment of vocational training as it is taught at different levels regionally. Some of those reasons are the need to hire skilled manpower, at an initial technical and technological training and education level, according to the requirements of national, regional or sectoral productive structures; the constant innovation in technology and labour organisation, with the subsequent demand of continuing and lifelong training of in-service workers; entrepreneurial organisations' concern for the increase in productivity in contexts where the increasing business competition (either national or international) and the awareness that human resources qualification are becoming a sine qua non condition to increase labour productivity.

Typology of institutional participation and entrepreneurial management of training

Statements by the employers' sector at Cinterfor/ILO's events

At the time of drawing up a scheme or typology as the one presented here, the idea is to organise or classify reality according to one or several variables. Three of them have been taken into account this time to describe the participation of employers' organisations in the field of institution-based vocational training:

a) the geographical scope of institutions or entities in charge of planning, managing, executing and evaluating training actions, distinguishing between national entities and entities that have a state, regional or departmental scope;
b) the sectoral coverage, by classifying institutions according to the sector to which training is provided: several sectors within the economic activity correspond to multisectoral institutions -; when there is one group of workers belonging to one particular sector, such as building industry, trade, rural sector, etc.; they are considered to be sectoral institutions;
c) the management and administration modality, distinguishing between institutions that are directly and autonomously run by employers' organisations or institutions that are managed and administrated jointly by them and workers' organisations - bipartite management -, or institutions jointly managed by them and the State and/or other actors of the civil society - multipartite management.

As these variables are interconnected, the chart below classifies training institutions and programmes in Latin America, the Caribbean and Spain according to the characteristics of the three variables described above. Each acronym or name of an institution or programme has a link that allows the reader to access detailed information about it. It is, therefore, a comprehensive overview of the participation of employers' organisations in the field of training. (2)