Employment and skills
The crisis lasting several years has lengthened the average time it takes for young people to enter the labour market and has also increased the number of adults forced to look for new employment. This means that more than ever before there is a need to support people in building their careers.
The fourth branch of ER Education and Research completes the regional plan with active policies aimed at: guiding people in the transition from school to work and from one job to another; enabling workers to update skills and sustaining the creation of new businesses.
To support people seeking work and to supply skills meeting the requirements of the economic and production system, the Region funds personalised pathways, implemented in collaboration with businesses, and made up of various actions, such as guidance, classroom and workplace learning, and assistance in starting a job.
These opportunities are also structured as a response to situations of corporate or sectoral crisis, such as the building industry crisis, in order to combat long-term unemployment of workers and to encourage their possible relocation. Education aimed at enabling people to enter the world of work is a priority tool in contrasting inequality and poverty, which the crisis has not only increased but also diversified.
Guidance for personalised career pathways, classroom and workplace learning, and assistance in starting a job are some of the actions designed for more vulnerable people, including the disabled.
To make these measures more effective in tackling the complex needs of more vulnerable people and to reach the objective of integration in the world of work, through Law no.14/2015 , the Region assigned the integrated care of these categories to social, health and labour services.
The Employment and Skills branch also includes traineeships and apprenticeships.
Traineeships are crucial in encouraging the acquisition of skills through direct learning in a real work situation and in reducing the time required for entry or re-entry into the labour market. On these grounds, the Region passed Law no.7/2013 establishing new rules for this instrument with four different types of training.
The first type is addressed to young people leaving school, university or vocational training; the second has the objective of enabling the unemployed, unoccupied, and laid-off or redundant workers to enter or re-enter the world of work; the third concerns people with disabilities, asylum-seekers, people entitled to international or humanitarian protection, and people requiring social protection; and the fourth type, introduced with Regional Law no. 14/2015 aims to encourage the social inclusion, independence and rehabilitation of particularly vulnerable people, who are excluded from the labour market and currently cared for by the social or health services.
The Region has chosen apprenticeship contracts, on the grounds of their considerable educationalvalue, as the best way of encouraging high-qualified entry for young people into the labourmarket.
There are three different forms: apprenticeships for qualifications, apprenticeships forvocational purposes, and higher education and research apprenticeships.
The Region supports apprenticeship contracts enabling young people to obtain a qualification while working: froma vocational qualification to a diploma, degree, master’s degree and Ph.D. There is a twofold benefit: young people are assisted in gaining further qualifications, even at the highest academiclevel, and strategic skills for innovation reach the SMEs.So-called continuous or longlife learning , lastly, concerns all the courses offered to employees,the self-employed, and entrepreneurs, aimed at supporting individual professional developmentand creating new businesses. Other goals include promoting safety in the workplace,improving the competitive profile of businesses and supporting productive and organisationalinnovation in the regional economic system.