The ILO works with member States to reform and strengthen their national skills policies and improve their training systems. Experience shows that an enabling framework linking skills development to productivity, employment, development and decent work targets three main objectives:
i) matching training to demand for skills in the labour market;
ii) helping workers and enterprises adjust to technological or market changes, making it easier to move from declining or low productivity activities to growing and higher productivity activities through re-skilling and lifelong learning; and
iii) building and sustaining competencies for future labour market needs, focusing on the strategic role of education and training policies in triggering and continuously fuelling innovation, enterprise development, technological change and competitiveness.
Coordinated efforts are needed to promote skills development at the workplace and along value chains, to help manage the drivers of change at work today, among them, new technologies and climate change, and to integrate skills development into national and sector development strategies. ILO work in this area supports mechanisms, institutions, and social dialogue that can sustain inter-ministerial coordination and improve the early identification of skill needs and reduction of skill gaps. Our research agenda focuses on sustainable forward-looking frameworks for skills development; country experiences worldwide in developing and implementing national qualifications frameworks; improving informal apprenticeship systems (see Skills for youth employment), and meeting the training needs created by economic stimulus programmes and emerging green jobs.