Contact us

Skills and Employability Branch (SKILLS)

Staff
Employment Policy Department

International Labour Office 4 Route des Morillons

Geneva 22
Switzerland
CH-1211

Tel : +41 22 799 7512
Fax : +41 22 799 6310
Email : skills@ilo.org
Website : www.ilo.org/skills

Recent publications and reports

  1. Apprenticeships

    ILO Toolkit for Quality Apprenticeships

    The ILO Toolkit for Quality Apprenticeships aims to improve the design and implementation of apprenticeship systems and programmes. The Toolkit consists of two volumes: Guide for Policy Makers, and a Guide for Practitioners.

  2. Career Guidance

    Career guidance policy and practice in the pandemic: Results of a joint international survey

    This joint global report reflects how career guidance services responded to the challenges posed by Covid-19. It highlights the range of solutions found, especially digital, and the challenges felt by services, practitioners and clients.

  3. Guide and digital interactive assessment tool on Making TVET and skills development inclusive for all

    The guide aims to help skills decision-makers and practitioners assess to what extent their TVET system is currently excluding certain individuals or groups, and provides practical ideas on what could be done to redress inequalities.

  4. Guidelines on Rapid Assessment of reskilling and upskilling needs in response to the COVID-19 crisis

    The guidelines focus on three broad types of impact on the labour market, and hence on demand for skills and opportunities for workers, with implications for reskilling and upskilling needs.

  5. ILO Evaluation Tool for the Review of a Country’s Apprenticeship Policy and System

    The ILO Evaluation Tool comprises guidelines and questionnaires and gives guidance on how to evaluate a country’s apprenticeship policy and system.

  6. The Digitization of TVET and Skills Systems

    This joint ILO-UNESCO report provides a global, high-level overview of how digitalization is affecting TVET and skills systems.

  7. Skills to combat forced labour

    The ILO has launched two Global Guidelines on the prevention and reintegration of victims of forced labour through skills and lifelong learning.

  8. Rapid STED: A practical guide

    This new guide provides advice on implementing an updated approach to STED. It aims to speed the process and to build capacity among national and sector partners.

Skills and Employability Branch (SKILLS)

Governments, employers' associations and trade unions around the world are working to improve the employability of workers, move young people into productive and decent work, and increase the productivity of enterprises through better quality and relevant training. The Skills and Employability Branch conducts comparative research and provides policy guidelines and technical assistance to help constituents integrate skills development into national and sector development strategies.

The ILO's work with constituents focuses primarily on three areas: linking training to current labour market needs as well as anticipating and building competencies for the jobs of the future; building quality apprenticeship systems and incorporating core skills into training for young people; and expanding access to employment-related training in rural communities in order to improve livelihoods, reduce poverty, and equip women and men to work in the formal economy.

What's new

  1. Event

    First Global Career Month kicks off on 8 November

    The first time Global Careers Month is being launched in November. Organized jointly by the Inter-Agency Career Guidance Working Group, the initiative aims to shine a spotlight on the importance of career guidance in helping individuals access decent work, careers, and the support they need to plan and develop their careers. The event runs from 8 November to 13 December.

  2. News

    ILO participates at the Global Lifelong Learning Summit 2022

    ILO SKILLS participates in Singapore’s Global Lifelong Learning Summit 2022 with a workshop on “Micro-credentials: Promoting lifelong learning and careers”.

  3. Press release

    The Islamic Development Bank and the ILO invite youth-led organizations, networks and coalitions to propose innovative ideas to support a just transition

    To assist young people in further translating their activism, commitment and creativity into action, the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) have designed the “IsDB-ILO Green Skills Accelerator Challenge Call”, with the overarching goal of promoting youth participation and skills for green jobs for a just transition.

  4. South Africa Skills Challenge Innovation Call: Boosting Youth Employability through Digital Skills

    The Skills Challenge Innovation Call is a joint multi-partner effort to boost youth employability through digital skills, by investing in human capital and by strengthening TVET systems.

  5. The 1st Malaysia Skills Challenge Innovation Call: Mainstreaming gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) in TVET/skills training institutions

    The ILO is calling on public and non-profit technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and skills training institutions in Malaysia to share their innovative approaches and sustainable solutions that promote equality and diversity of students and/or trainees in their organisation and training programmes.

  6. 110th session of the ILC

    Standard-setting on apprenticeships

  7. Flanders finances ILO Global Programme on skills and lifelong learning

    The Flemish Government will fund an ILO International Programme on Skills. Interview with Julie Bynens, Secretary-General of the Flemish Department of Chancellery and Foreign Affairs, and David Maenaut, General Representative of Flanders to the UN in Geneva.

  8. Capacity building workshop on the Skills for Trade and Economic Diversification (STED) for five SIFA countries

    The STED capacity building workshop was held in Zanzibar, Tanzania on April 4 - 8, 2022 within the framework of the SIFA-Skills Anticipation Project.

  9. Structured Funding Dialogue: Development partners reaffirm their commitment to support the ILO’s work on Skills and Lifelong learning

    On 28th March 2022, the International Labour Organization (ILO) organized a Structured Funding Dialogue on Skills and Lifelong Learning to build and reinforce sustainable partnerships and explore funding modalities for its recently launched Global Programme on Skills and Lifelong Learning (GPSL3).

  10. ILO Skills Challenge Innovation Call: winning proposals from Ecuador and Comoros start their innovation journey

    Winning entries of the 2nd and 3rd Skills Challenge Innovation Calls were successfully launched in Ecuador and Comoros, with winning teams, partners and their networks expressing their commitment to support e-formality through skills development in Latin America and the Caribbean and around the prevention of forced labour through skills and lifelong learning in Africa.

  11. ILO training on Skills for a Greener Future: building resilience and entering the path to sustainable development in Ethiopia

    Through its Global Programme on Skills & Lifelong Learning (GPSL3) in Ethiopia, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has conducted a three-day training on “skills for a greener future”, which is the first of its kind in the region. The training took place at Bahirdar, Amhara regional state, from 14 - 16 February 2022.

  12. ILO SKILL UP Ghana Project Supports the implementation of Skills for Trade and Economic Diversification (STED) in the Ghanaian Healthcare sector

    The ILO and the Commission for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (CTVET) facilitated a capacity building workshop to support the development of a skills strategy for the healthcare sector in Ghana.

  13. Policy guidance note

    Digitalising career guidance services

    This policy guidance note provides advice to decision makers, managers and technical staff on how to invest in digitalising career guidance services.

  14. Technological innovations in Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL)

    The objective of this webinar is to provide policymakers and practitioners with a platform for an open discussion during which knowledge, experience and innovative ideas associated with the digitalisation of RPL are shared.

  15. How to strengthen informal apprenticeship systems for a better future of work?: Lessons learned from comparative analysis of country cases

    This working paper undertakes a meta study on informal apprenticeship in developing countries. It compares the findings of country-level research conducted by the ILO and others in the past 15 years to shed more light on apprenticeship systems in the informal economy.

  16. Global Programme on Skills and Lifelong Learning (GPSL3)

    The Global Programme on Skills and Lifelong Learning (GPSL3) serves as an operational arm of the ILO Global Technical Team on skills and lifelong learning. It works as an accelerator of the Office’s actions to reach the ILO Programme & Budget Outcome 5. It also serves as facilitator of knowledge management and innovation on skills and lifelong learning.

  17. Changing demand for skills in digital economies and societies: Literature review and case studies from low- and middle-income countries

    The report reviews different approaches to measuring digital skills, and discusses the impact of digitalization on skills and related policy recommendations.

  18. Policy Brief - Digitalisation of TVET and skills development: Leveraging technology to support lifelong learning

    This policy brief concentrates on the digital transformation of skills systems and how technologies affect them. It is focused on how skills systems themselves become digitised, not how they respond to the demand for skills arising from digitalisation in the labour market.

  19. Video series: Shaping skills and lifelong learning for the future of work

    This series of videos highlight the key points addressed in the report "Shaping skills and lifelong learning for the future of work" to be discussed at the 109th International Labour Conference.

  20. ILO announces the winners of the 3rd ILO Skills Innovation Call on Preventing forced labour in Africa

    The winner of the 3rd ILO Skills Challenge Innovation Call has been announced, and the USD 30,000 prize has gone to a youth entrepreneurship network in Comoros.

  21. ILO announces winners of the 2nd ILO Skills Challenge Innovation Call on e-formality and skills development

    Winning proposals offer innovative solutions for labour formalization in Latin America and the Caribbean through new technologies and skills development.

  22. Digitalization of national TVET and skills systems: Harnessing technology to support LLL: An enquiry and action framework

    This report describes and updates the picture of digital vocational education and training, providing an overview of the issues surrounding digitalisation across the key functional areas of skills systems.

  23. The ILO and the Government of Bangladesh developed an awareness-raising campaign for TVET institutes

    ILO’s EU funded Skills 21 project supported the government of Bangladesh to develop an awareness-raising campaign strategy for the TVET institutes to bring behavioural changes in awareness, knowledge, attitudes and beliefs, self-efficacy and social norms towards TVET.

  24. Meet the finalists of the 3rd ILO Skills Challenge Innovation Call on Preventing forced labour in Africa

    The finalists will be invited to present their ideas in a virtual pitch event, which will be the final stage of the evaluation process.

  25. Meet the finalists of the 2nd ILO Skills Challenge Innovation Call

    The finalists will have the opportunity to present their projects during a live-streamed event on 4 November 2021.

  26. ILO and Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training sign an agreement to promote skills and lifelong learning

    The Letter of Understanding between the two organizations aims to promote skills and lifelong learning for all workers throughout their working lives.

  27. Virtual Conference

    Continental virtual conference on skills anticipation and matching in Africa

    Under the auspices of the Skills Initiative for Africa, (SIFA) the Africa Union Commission, and African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NPEAD), with the technical support of the International Labour Organization will be holding an Africa wide conference on Skills Anticipation.

  28. Global framework on core skills for life and work in the 21st century

    The new ILO global framework reflects the ongoing transformations and the emerging opportunities in the world of work. Nineteen core skills are listed as essential both for work and life.

  29. Infographic

    Competency-Based Training (CBT): An Introductory Manual for Practitioners

    The competency-based training (CBT) approach to TVET is highly effective to ensure that training programmes remain relevant to the labour market.