6.3 The role of enterprises in career guidance

The role of enterprises in career guidance

Traditionally, career guidance has been informing individuals about the world of work and career opportunities and supporting individuals in entering the labour market.  Currently, it needs to be developed in closer contact with enterprises and employers. However, there are number of challenges in engaging employers to support career services.

Countries can have different means of activating co-operation between career services and enterprises. First, employers can provide information on current and projected demand of skills and competences, and help to shape the supply of skills and labour.  Good quality and reliable labour market information enables individuals to make choices about learning and work opportunities and pathways that are based on the realities of occupations and labour markets (European Council, 2018). Employer engagement in career guidance typically includes such activities as job or careers fairs, talks and networking sessions, work experience placements and job shadowing, and mentoring activities (OECD, 2018). 

The ELGPN (2015b) defines career guidance for employed adults as a range of learning activities and products that enable them to take stock of their present work situation (role, conditions, content) and the competences they have acquired from work and life-wide learning and their validation, and to plan further learning and work transitions and life-wide transitions such as retirement.

Career guidance activities for the employed can take place within enterprises as part of a human resources development strategy or as a trade-union activity, but are more likely to be delivered through a national careers service, through the public employment service, through specialist careers services or through private providers. For employers, lifelong guidance is a major tool for human resource development, for maintaining a high level of productivity in the workforce, for attracting, motivating and retaining high-quality employees, and for matching the skills level of staff with forecasted competence needs.

In strengthening the role of enterprises in the career services, the ELGPN suggests that countries should develop policies and systems that:

• Exchange information, market the benefits of lifelong guidance to both employers and employees, and make the employers and employees aware of careers services that currently exist.
• Support a comprehensive approach for career learning for students, combining career education programmes within curriculum, experience-based learning and out-of-school/work-based learning using community resources.
• Ensure access to guidance for employed people, for the validation of their non-formal/informal learning. In other words, provide the employed with information and support for the analysis of their workplace and life-wide learning, accompany them through the accreditation process, and advise them on further training pathways inside and outside the enterprise.
• Support partnership collaboration (trade unions, professional bodies, employers’ organisations, educational institutions, public and private employment services and community-based organisations) for the design of career education programmes with schools and for the provision of guidance services for the employed.
• Stimulate guidance support in enterprises, particularly in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), by introducing incentives. For example, making lifelong guidance an allowable expenditure under training levy schemes; or introducing schemes that give public recognition to enterprises that provide exemplary programmes.
• Ensure that workforce/human resources development policies stress the importance of lifelong guidance, and that human resources staff have the professional training to undertake this activity.
• Promote the development of career management skills for the employed.
• Ensure that lifelong guidance for employees features on the negotiating table in the collective bargaining of social partners at national and sector levels.

In the future, career guidance needs to transform into a service, which not only supports the needs of individuals, but also supports the development of enterprises’ competence level and competitiveness.

Further reading:

• OECD [Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development] (2018). Working It Out: Career Guidance and Employer Engagement. Paris: OECD;

• ELGPN [European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network]. (2015b). The Guidelines for Policies and Systems Development for Lifelong Guidance: A Reference Framework for the EU and for the Commission. ELGPN Tools No. 6. Saarijärvi, Finland.