Theme 1: Securing a Learning Workplace, Employability, Competitiveness and Social Inclusion - Questions and Contributions Panel: Nick Stuart, Department for Education and Employment, UK Rolf Lindholm, Swedish Employers' Federation Chris Humphries, Training and Enterprise Council Klaus Draxler, European Commission

Q: We just heard that everybody should consciously plan and choose his own learning. My question is: is not there a danger that we overload the responsibility and the competence of those who are not so far attending our continuing education courses? Should we not first of all acknowledge their informal, their everyday learning which is often unconscious, unplanned, sporadic, weak and so on, and needs sensible help and support? Should we not leave our traditional expectations of real learning which has to be professionally planned always? Should we not acknowledge what the weak learning half of the population is experiencing everyday in his and her everyday life and try to start there? Isn't this the first step that we should take?

A (Chris Humphries): Of course, the learning that everyone engages in throughout their lives is of enormous value. It is of enormous value to them, to their family, to the society in which they operate. But there is a second question, if the topic that we were addressing in this session was about the link between learning and employability, then there has to be a question as to whether that learning adds value or does not add value to their employability.

Now the problem is that, for many learners, the changing nature of the world of work is happening so rapidly that it is very difficult to be sure about the extent to which the learning one is currently undertaking, and the informal learning one has had, is appropriate to make a contribution to employability.

For me it is about getting a better relationship between the world of work and formal and informal learning and putting in place systems that help individuals map what they are undertaking with what the employment opportunities of tomorrow require. Now that is actually, from my perception, calling for a quite different partnership between employers and learners.

A (Rolf Lindholm): That the individual should be responsible for his or her own competence development is very much emphasised in all the leading groups or businesses I have visited. That does not mean that there are no other roads. I have seen for example the human resource people becoming facilitators, moving around in the organisation, stimulating managers and employees to sit down and discuss how to tackle these competence development issues. The management has of course a very important role in setting up a dialogue with the employees, forming systematic plans with the individual employee and in following up whether those plans are coming into reality later on.

So it is not an either-or, but I would say that we have for decades become used to thinking that a lot of employees are so weak that they cannot take responsibility for their own development. In Sweden, we have even trained the citizen in the welfare state to have the same attitude. I have seen so many examples that when you release these people; when you release their potential for responsibility, fantastic things happen. I mean, we have in many cases by very simple measures achieved 100% - 150% productivity increase without any investment, because such an enormous amount of energy is imprisoned in our scientific management system in these jobs, and the borders between jobs, and the borders between different levels in hierarchic existence.

Think about the following, that we had no jobs. If we had no jobs, many of the old fashioned ways of thinking or training could not possibly to carry on any more. It is a fascinating fact that Japan had no jobs. Then they had, up to 1949, jobs just as we have, but during 5 years they lost that concept because of a special development in the Toyota group. They had to fire a lot of people and there was an historic compromise that they had no right to fire, but then the employees had to promise to do whatever was asked for in the company. Then they had to change the payment system because the payment system was linked to jobs.

So it is a dream I have, that in the future we will have no jobs only individuals who are all the time moving, developing in competence.

Q: I think it was clearest in Chris Humphries' presentation that basically there are 3 players: there is the individual, the employer and the state. I do not think anybody said anything about unions, or all the other ways in which society is organised, the way which interest groups are represented. It seems to me that there is a rather big hole there.

A (Rolf Lindholm): Yes. I am sorry if I did not express myself clearly. In the leading business companies I visited, on the company level, management and trade union representatives are forming the strategies. That is, as I said, a new dialogue, dialogue which I have not heard so much about before, because now they have joint enemies and they have to fight for their survival.

But I must confess that in the companies I have worked with or I have visited, the pressure for change is so very strong that every employee has to be mobilised. I have done these studies together with the trade union representatives from Denmark, and we fully agree that so far we have not seen it in reality. However, of course it will happen, and it is natural that managements attempts are orientated for business needs and the trade unions play a special role in ensuring that certain groups are not lost.

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