BY TONY PALLADINO
SKILLS THAT REALLY MATTER
Over the past 20 years, economies and the organization of work have witnessed a fundamental change in which occupations have become more complex and employees' responsibilities have been linked more with competencies than with routine.
This change has necessitated more flexibility in labour mobility and productivity, and enhanced innovative capacity of companies to assimilate new production technologies rapidly and adapt themselves timely to new demands of the market. In response to these shifts, new methods for occupational analysis and recognition are being deployed by leading organizations across the globe to remain competitive.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member countries are experiencing continuing and fast-paced economic growth. For their sustainability, access to a more highly-skilled and competent workforce; a workforce which can help advance its international and regional competitiveness of its economy is crucial. Further, given their collective vision of diversifying economies away from oil, it requires the Middle East economy to operate in a more globally competitive and constantly changing environment.
To address this, the region increasingly requires an adaptable and highly skilled, educated and qualified workforce.
To build such a workforce the regions, like many other progressive countries, are working to develop and establish world class responsive education and training systems that are both nationally and internationally recognised, and to establish an underpinning national qualifications system.
Within the region there are often already well-established arrangements in place for the Higher Education and General Education sectors, with specific improvements underway to raise quality. However, in Vocational Education and Training (VET) much work is now focusing, in consultation with industry, on developing this sector aiming to connect education and training systems to workplace needs. For example Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the UAE are heavily investing in building world class VET systems comparable to international practices.
An increasing international approach that the region has considered and adopted with respect to the VET sector, is to invite industry stakeholders (e.g. employers, employees,
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