The recently published paper from Adecco Group, a multinational private employment service company, focuses on the importance of closing the skills gaps and highlights Vocational education training (VET) and apprenticeships as the tools available to achieve it. These “vehicles for investing in people” are increasingly necessary considering the impact of Covid-19 on employment - with a skills gap more pronounced within the current workforce and job seekers, now and for the next years. “If predictions are that 85% of jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t been invented yet, then the need for new skills becomes ever more apparent. As such, there needs to be a shift of focus that currently equates academic achievement to employability, to one that champions skills that can be immediately taken and used in the workplace”.

VET and apprenticeships are ideal tools to achieve employability through skill enhancement and are better suited to allow adaptation to a changing working environment.

However, it also underlines the obstacles for these two vehicles to be properly exploited.

As a form of example, VET pathways “need to be shown as valuable education routes rather than a ‘second best’ path for those unable or unwilling to take an academic route”, and clear financing needs to be established, especially for working adults looking for upskilling or reskilling.

Moreover, an additional mind shift is suitable on the employers’ side: “Employers need to move away from an obsession with degrees and instead shift to a skills-based hiring approach, where they consider and look at the skills needed for a particular role and then recruit accordingly”.

The paper then explains how to address those obstacles, by:

• Improving the design of VET and apprenticeships programmes, in coordination with the social partners;
• Extending the sectors for VET and apprenticeships (“in Switzerland, the three most popular apprenticeship occupations are business and administration, wholesale and retail sales, and building and civil engineering”);
• Ensure strong career guidance to students and working adults.

A coordinated approach to “invest in people, not only jobs” (as said by Alain Dehaze, CEO of The Adecco Group) comprises the following:

• Cooperation between employers, trade unions, schools, training providers to identify skills gaps and design training programmes;
• Removal of barriers to choosing VET and apprenticeships;
• Adequate promotion of those programmes.