Skills development

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:

• matching training to demand for skills in the labour market;
• 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
• 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.

Priorities for skills development policies in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Russian Federation and Tajikistan are in line with the G20 Training Strategy. The focus is on matching workforce supply with skills needs; life-long learning based on access to quality education and training; as well as anticipating future demand in the labour market and linking it to TVET curricula. Based on assessment of the needs for modernisation of TVET sector, the ILO and the constituents in the member states decided to include the following aspects in skills development policies to be designed and implemented in 2011-2013: promotion of workplace learning through apprenticeships; the role of social dialogue in designing skills development policies; enhanced involvement of public employment services as one of the key stakeholders in skills development; gender dimension; and development of National Vocational Qualification Frameworks (NVQFs) as a tool in the strategy.

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.
See also
Skills policies and systems
Skills training for poverty reduction