VED-EDS Strategy Formation Tool - Regional Labour Market Monitoring

VED-EDS Strategy Formation Tool

Quick Introduction

This tool is designed to help actors involved in labour market and VET activities, such as VET- and labour market- policymakers, VET providers, but also observatories and other practitioners, in the strategy formation process. Its goal is to support building a strategy that tackles specific challenges and solves specific problems in a region.

Main Content

This tool is designed to help all different types of actors involved in labour market and VET activities, such as VET- and labour market-policymakers on different regional levels, VET providers, but also observatories and other practitioners, to understand the forming of a strategy followed by targeted action to set up a process of labour market and VET monitoring.

The goal is to support building a strategy that tackles specific challenges and solves specific problems in a region. Instead of simply giving ready-made solutions, which worked in some cases and might work in others, we rather suggest studying underlying the mechanisms in labour market- and VET-monitoring processes in different regions with successful practices and strategies already established. By doing so, you can identify recurring cycles with different phases, stages and actions. These recurring cycles of monitoring and action involve:

During a first phase, collecting information and analysing the situation in a region is carried out. This includes an analysis of the situation, the issues, problems, challenges, obstacles and hindering as well as supporting factors for a wide variety of fields, ranging from the functioning of the labour market to the state of economic development and the distribution and provision of skills. During this phase, actors should identify lacks in the knowledge and information available and undertake efforts to fill them. This includes the search for further information sources, ways to obtain the knowledge they inherit, means of analysing them and which other actors carrying important information must be contacted and included into the process. After closing as many information gaps as possible a diagnosis is carried out based on the detailed information now available. The better the information basis at hand, the more detailed and on point the analysis will be. With such an analysis the current state of the labour market, the VET-system, the economic development of a region or an industrial sector can be assessed. It will discover problems and issues that need to be solved to improve the functioning of the labour market, the VET-system or whatever possible field of action has been analysed. Identifying the major challenges and setting the priorities to work on is the main task here. Clear goals need to be set. This is the only way, suitable instruments and measures to be undertaken in the following phases can be decided on.

This Toolkit was made possible through the support of the European Commission's ERASMUS+ Programme. All views and opinions expressed are those of the VET-EDS Partners and not of the European Commission.

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What follows is identifying how to tackle the identified problems and challenges in the analysed fields. A strategy needs to be developed, which includes several different ingredients. These ingredients are actors, actions, resources and dissemination. This has to include not only the newly to develop ones, but also and especially the already existing structures. To ensure that this process takes place in a coordinated manner and that all relevant actors and stakeholders need to be involved early. Furthermore, the contributions from different actors for reaching the set goals should be defined settled upon. Finally, it is important to consider how the measures that already exist in the respective field of action can be integrated into the newly designed strategy.

After the implementation of the measures based on the strategy, an evaluation follows to assess the effects of the actions taken place. Such an evaluation gives information about what worked, which problems could be solved, where there is still room for improvements and which challenges still exist. It therefore provides a solid basis for possible readjustments where needed within the developed strategy. The evaluation should ideally include views opinions and experiences from different actors involved in the process to make sure a broad variety can be included. This way, it is most likely to discover still existent weaknesses and room for improvement.

Figure 1, below illustrates the strategy formation process of labour market monitoring.

Figure 1: The strategy Formation Process of labour market monitoring

Source: IWAK.

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Each phase with its elements relies on different tools and methods to choose from. The data collection process can be done with numerous different methods leading to different types of data as a result with different strengths and weaknesses each. While one can rely on surveys to assess the status quo of an issue, it is also possible to obtain projection or foresight data to identify future problems and fields of action. The exchange and evaluation of existing good practices can be a way to identify fields of action for a new strategy, too, often also including information on possible solutions.

The data management task includes ways of working with data and corresponding knowledge in a regional strategy for labour market and VET action. First, it is important to evaluate which data sources are accessible or can be made accessible at which cost and effort. At this stage, one will have also have to consider the nature of the data in each source and its value for the strategy formation process. After working with the data and getting knowledge and information from it, actors should validate this newly acquired knowledge in the field. This is done by communicating with actors and stakeholders in the field, presenting the data, getting views and opinions on it and thus, assessing its value and weight. What follows is the dissemination process. Making the data and the results of the analysis available and distribute them among a broad audience has to be done at this stage.

Relying on existing or building new collaboration structures is another element of the monitoring activities in the strategy formation process. Again, there are several ways to achieve this. In addition, according to your goals, position, your status or value of your network one or the other can be most suited. Establishing your organisation as a regional leader in the addressed issue is a possibility if you have the status and resources available. Other methods or strategies can include relying on regional network structures, using expert panels or setting up working groups composed of strategically important actors for your regional effort.

Lastly, in the regional strategy building process, it is necessary to have a clear focus. The decision on which field to concentrate and target the strategy towards is mandatory for the process and to achieve good results. The focus can be set on specific sectors, different labour market target groups, certain organisations and their role or development, the VET-system or the state of economic development in a region. Narrowing down the efforts to one of these fields also means reducing the complexity of the strategic approach as a whole, as certain data, actors and methods are hardly viable in some of the fields, whereas other are especially so.

Figure 2 (overleaf) provides an overview of the different elements and corresponding methods in the regional strategy formation process.

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Figure 2: Eleents of Labour Market Monitoring in the Context of the Strategy Formation Process

Mehtods of data collection and analysis:

* Survey

* Forecast

* Foresight

* Good practice exchange and analysis

Focus:

* Sector

* Specific target groups of labour market policies

* Organisation

* VET-System

* State of Economic Development

Regional strategybuilding process

Data management:

* Sources (e.g. administrative statistics, experts, processsdata)

* Communication and validation

* Presentation and dissemination (e.g. website, reports, occupational cards)

Source: IWAK.

Collaboration structures: * Regional leadership * Regional network * Expert panels * Working Groups

The sustainability of the process described above is ensured through various different factors:

Strategic leadership in the locality A clear defined leadership role defined from the beginning often helps a project to run smoothly and being kept on track. A well-executed project management and a leading partner with the assigned role of an administrative and organisational leader can ensure this.

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Wide involvement of local stakeholders A wide and early involvement of stakeholders and the effort to integrate their interests into the process is of large importance to reduce the chance of later problems that might occur because strategically important actors were left out in the beginning and are later not willing to cooperate anymore.

Communicative effort of the participants Do good things and talk about them. Without communicating the efforts of a project, an initiative or a program as a result of the strategic process in the field, the efforts will not be fruitful. Raise interest in your actions and strategies to make them even more effective.

Neutral moderation of the process Depending on your role, it can be of great importance to stay in a neutral position during the strategy formation process. Especially when trying to bring opposing actors and stakeholders in a region together and have them work towards a shared goal this can be the only way to achieve cooperation.

Connections with existing structures and sources of financing While often times designing new strategies involves designing new tools and actions or establishing new structures, it is highly unlikely that these will be effective if they do not go hand in hand or even conflict with already exiting and established structures. Sometimes aligning exiting means is even more effective than trying to do something completely new.

External guidance of the process, at least in the initial phase In many cases, partners in an initiative are experienced in the field of action and have great knowledge about what they are working on. While this is generally desired and a great plus for any strategy process, it inherits the danger of becoming too narrow. Guidance from external actors without great involvement in the field can be very helpful to keep an eye on the progress made and the way the cooperation works.

About the author

Daniel Kahnert is a researcher at IWAK ? Institute for Economics, Labour and Culture, Centre of Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. IWAK is the labour market observatory of the Goethe-University. Originally a Sociologist, Daniel Kahnert has great experience and expertise in the fields of industrial sociology of labour, organisation science and innovation studies and empirical research methods. Recently he has concentrated his research on the analysis of regional labour market systems in Europe.

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