What I am describing here is what can be done about these barriers and the concept I am using is the broker function. We are talking about the small and medium-sized enterprises having no professionalism in training, so it has to have help from the outside world. Maybe this outside helper could be the broker, somebody who is the professional in bringing good relations between these two enterprises and training providers.

Professional Brokers

In one of the projects I have been involved in, a LEONARDO project called the Cross Project, we found such programme managers or professional brokers in Austria and Finland, in Iceland, in the United Kingdom, in Spain, in Portugal and in Denmark. We have tried, during two years of work, to describe what these professional functions are. What are these elements needed to get the good relation between these two organisations? Our results show that these programme management functions are the same everywhere. It is not a question of culture, it is not a question of economy, it is not a question of things like that; they are the same.

Then I come to my next question, 'How can we train the unemployed for working life?' The former speaker talked about the Danish idea of the job rotation scheme, and I will talk here a little about the thinking that education and training of individuals must be tailor-made. If we focus upon the individual, trying to find out what the learning needs of that single person are, then the possibility of getting good results would be much higher. When we are talking about the unemployed, training must be tailor-made for a concrete enterprise, an enterprise that you can see, feel, hear, smell. Then training is complete.

Job Rotation

Job rotation is one of the answers, one of the possibilities in Europe today, but it depends on the professionalism of this person that I am calling the broker, or we could call him or her the programme manager. What I am saying here is that if you want to do something for the unemployed you should give the job to a professional who should not start a course but should start analysing the learning needs of the individuals. Tailor make the course, then hear it through and move from learning and from implementation to follow up, because those competencies, that you get during a course, are of no use unless they are put into real life. In this way, the learners are supported in using their new competencies.

Here comes the strange concept of job rotation. You start with the training of the individuals and then, when their training is through, they can start as substitutes in the enterprise, employees who can start their own training course. It means for the professional broker, the programme manager, that the broker is playing here and moving back to be the consultant for the unemployed while they are working as substitutes in the enterprise.

This model has the good consequence that one person or a group of people has the information about the individual learners, about the culture of the enterprise, about the provider of training, about the individual trainers and so on. This person can give the right information when it is needed during the whole process, during the move.

Already Here

How can we find these professional brokers? What I am saying here is that we already have them; they are somewhere. Maybe they are not so professional but they have experiences; why not compare experiences; why not let the brokers from different European countries meet each other and exchange experiences?

Then I come to another project, the first one I was talking about was a LEONARDO Project and now I come to the SOCRATES Project on the training of these professional brokers. We have been discussing this for a year now. We have made some plans and have a third question, how can brokers get professional training? We are trying to find an answer to this questions in this Socrates Project, involving Austria, Finland, Iceland, United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain and Denmark.

While we are planning the pilots of brokers with some professional experience each national partner in the pilot will recruit four brokers. So we will get 28 brokers in this pilot which will start with a seminar, where the brokers will meet each other and discuss their problems. Then we would have an exchange of experiences for half a year with guidance, with support from some of the people who have been working on the project.

We are planning to have four professional facilitators supporting these people who are working in practice during half the year. I would be one of the facilitators and, if the European Commission give us the third year, we are planning a European Diploma for Education of Professional Brokers. Those are my answers to the questions raised by Baroness Blackstone.

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