Better Use of Skills in the Workplace
Why It Matters for Productivity and Local Jobs
This joint OECD-ILO report provides a comparative analysis of case studies focusing on improving skills use in the workplace across eight countries. The examples provide insights into the practical ways in which employers interact with government services and policies at the local level. They highlight the need to build policy coherence across employment, skills, economic development and innovation policies, and underline the importance of ensuring that skills utilisation is built into policy development thinking and implementation.
Skills utilisation concerns the extent to which skills are effectively applied in the workplace to maximise workplace and individual performance. It involves a mix of policies including work organisation, job design, technology adaptation, innovation, employee-employer relations, human resource development practices and business-product market strategies. It is often at the local level that the interface of these factors can best be addressed.
Foreword
The OECD has recently affirmed the importance of increased productivity and continued economic growth as means of providing the best opportunity to raise the prosperity and well-being of people. Skills represent the great equalizer and provide a critical route out of poverty and inequality for many individuals. However, traditional approaches to skills have focused on supply as a means of boosting overall local economic development. Skills utilisation approaches represent a new way of thinking about public policies, moving away from traditional supply side approaches to focus on how to better work with employers to raise the quality of jobs at the local level and provide employees with more autonomy to create innovation in the workplace.