Why is skills development important?
Skills development is among the greatest challenges facing countries, enterprises and people all across the world today. It plays a vital role in promoting employment, economic growth, and inclusive societies. Without the proper investment in skills many people will be excluded, job opportunities created through technological advances cannot be filled and countries will find it difficult to compete in an increasingly global society.
What are the benefits of skills development?
Stepping up investments in training and skills development throughout the individual’s life stages, from basic education to initial training intended to facilitate the school-to-work transition and during a working life, helps to ensure that people have the right skills to respond to the needs of the labour market. It is also a key factor in addressing labour mismatches and wasteful situations of both skills shortages and skills gaps co-existing with unemployment. Yet, developing relevant skills training requires bridging the world of education and training to the world of work.
What is the Global KSP?
The Global KSP is a collaborative platform that pools the relevant knowledge products on skills for employment from international organizations, governments, employers and workers on what works to promote skills development. It aims to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas among institutions, enterprises and experts from all countries on how to improve employability and productivity.
Who is involved in the Global KSP?
Initiated by the ILO, the Global KSP benefits from the support and collaboration of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Bank.
Why the Global KSP?
The impetus for the Global KSP comes from a request made by governments, employers and workers that the ILO establish a global knowledge bank on skills (Note 1). The website also benefits from the encouragement of the G20 that the ILO, OECD, UNESCO and the World Bank act as a “unified and coordinated team” to support countries in designing and implementing skills for employment strategies (Note 2). The knowledge sharing platform is part of the strategy to address this mandate.
For whom is it intended?
The Global KSP is intended as an online resource for policy-makers, representatives of employer and worker organizations, entrepreneurs and owners of businesses, practitioners in technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions, trainers, academics, researchers and experts in multilateral and bilateral agencies who are interested in learning from each other’s experience on skills for employment.
Exactly how is it different from other websites?
In comparison to existing websites, the Global KSP offers two main sources of value-added:
1). A focus on skills as the bridge from education and training to the world of work. This includes, within work, to ease the movement of workers and enterprises from informal work to the formal economy, and from declining or low-productivity activities and sectors into expanding and higher-productivity ones. Content on the website is focused on the policy themes and broad spectrum of ‘building blocks’ essential for constructing robust training and skills strategies and policies (Note 3).
2). Translating complex knowledge and experience into pragmatic how-to policy options that governments, employers, workers and training institutions can use to effect change. This requires providing different ‘knowledge products’ – good practices, international standards on human resources development, evaluation reports, advocacy materials, among others - for different users. For example, policy-makers might want succinct policy briefs; their advisers might look for international labour standards and national skills policies; employers and workers could search for case studies; academics might prefer in-depth research papers; activists and advocates might value videos and speeches. In short, the platform would allow users with a wide variety of interest to find what they need – and what they could put to use - without having to sift through a vast number of knowledge products that suit others, or other circumstances.
How can potential users of the Global KSP get involved in contributing their knowledge products?
Professionals and experts involved in skills are invited to send their knowledge products to: knowledge@skillsforemployment.org
Note 1 – ILO: Conclusions concerning the recurrent discussion on employment, International Labour Conference, 99th Session, Geneva, 2010, para 33.
Note 2 - G20, Development Working Group, Multi-Year Action Plan on Development, Seoul Summit, November 2010.
Note 3 - ILO/G20: A skilled workforce for strong, sustainable and balanced growth: A G20 Training Strategy, 2010.
