Future of the workplace

Social dialogue: focus needed on process of competence-building and employer involvement

Rather than solely focusing on the types of training made available to local and regional government administrations, it is also important to look at the process behind competence-building and the involvement of employees in their own professional development.

Indeed, participants of a workshop on lifelong learning, training and skills development in the local and regional government sector came to the above conclusion when identifying existing agreements between social partners* in various European countries.

In Norway, for example, social partners developed a programme called “Partnership for a better municipality”, which focuses on actively involving employees in the workplace rather than just providing them with training sessions. The programme also helps promote the setting-up of a more permanent and direct dialogue between the supervisor or manager and the employee.

To give another example, Regional Centres for Public Service have been set up in France to identify the different needs of public servants in each local administration so as to provide them with more adapted professional training. This strategy aims at going beyond the provision of new training to also measure the impact of existing training and skills development.

Furthermore, workshop participants suggested that different examples of social partner agreements be collected so as to develop potential common guidelines as a tool for the European social dialogue committee on local and regional government administration.

The workshop was held on 15 March 2012 in Brussels, Belgium, in the framework of the social dialogue project on “The future of the workplace: providing quality jobs, modern and sustainable workplaces in local and regional government”. The project is headed by the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) and the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU).

The next workshop, which is to discuss equality, diversity and non-discrimination, will be held on 16 May 2012 in Brussels.

* Social partners refer to employer representatives and trade unions.

First workshop on alternative funding mechanisms for the local and regional government sector

Second workshop on recruitment and retention with a special focus on youth and elderly employment