10.7 The three principal stakeholders in effective workplace learning of Government, employers and employees will properly have distinct, if overlapping and complementary, expectations from workplace learning. Government will be interested in developing a highly skilled national workforce, and potential workforce, capable of responding to economic and technological change in the medium and long term.
10.8 Employers will wish to see a return on their investment in learning, in terms of improved efficiency, staff commitment, productivity and adaptability, as well as laying the foundation for continuing success in their product or service market. From their point of view, quite rightly, the promotion of workplace learning needs to be linked to the prospects of improved business performance. For their part, individuals, and their representatives and trade unions, will expect learning opportunities to provide for transferable skills, competence and knowledge enabling choices to be made in career and individual development and personal fulfilment as well as improving their performance in their current occupation. In short, lifelong learning for workers also calls for partnership, between employers, employees, trade unions and Government.
10.9 At company or workplace level, co-ordination should be carried out in through agreed arrangements between employers, trade unions and employee representatives. Workplace learning also needs to be coherent and co-ordinated beyond the workplace. A key role in this should be allocated to the new regional partnerships which we advocate, working closely with the new Regional Development Agencies and Government Regional Offices. They could co-ordinate activities at regional and sub-regional levels to ensure consistency, quality and best value. They should establish partnerships between TECs, employers, trade unions, institutions of further and higher education and other learning providers for the development and delivery of workplace learning. As a major new enabling agency at national level, the new University for Industry could also work with regional partnerships and Regional Development Agencies.
10.10 Consideration should be given to the establishment of strategic lifelong learning forums to support workplace learning, based on partnership between employers, employees, trade unions and Government. They could be responsible for the promotion and co-ordination of efforts to extend lifelong learning for all at workplace, sub-regional, regional and national levels.
| Previous Point | Next Point | Return to Section 10 |