Aiming to analyse technical-professional and human capital training, the Sociedad de Fomento Fabril together with the Training and Employment Corporation SOFOFA, hosted the 10th Business and Education Annual Meeting– ENEDUC 2014.

SOFOFA’s president, Hermann von Mühlenbrock, began ENEDUC pointing out the importance of the Encounter as a space for networking and proposals’ diffusion between the private sector and education.

In such a context, he stated that “it is vital for both, the State and educational institutions, to encourage and value education for work, so that young people may guide their expectations towards technical careers, where there are greater employment opportunities. This increases productivity and provides better life quality for society as a whole”.

Following von Mühlenbrock, the deputy secretary of the Ministry of Education, Valentina Quiroga, talked about the importance of having a policy on technical-professional education. She highlighted three dimensions: quality, a link to the labour and productive environment and the importance of the technical professional role.

Finally she underlined that the public and private sectors need to complement each other. “The public sector needs a strong private sector, and the private sector needs a strong public sector.

Thinking that these two sectors have to fight each other is a stupid dichotomy. They both need each other and the country needs them both” she claimed.

The encounter also had the participation of Martin Padulla, sociologist expert on labour markets, with focus on Latin America and consultant of regional sectorial organizations and enterprises, who talked about “Technical-Professional Training and Development of Dynamic and Competitive Labour Markets’”.

During his lecture, he explained that there is a need to build human capital, but in order to do so, understanding and motivating new generations is vital. It is important to reach young people with an adequate message, using the correct means.

Padulla stated that the new workforce is creating new working environments and that companies will have to work on how to “sell” their projects to young people.

The sociologist said that in Latin America the concept of Employment Observatories is plentiful. It is important to change that for the concept of Employability Observatories, having a simple but strong tool that gathers regional information on the skills demanded by the labour market and on the skills generated by the education system on a regular basis. “The first only takes into account what is going on from a “desk” perspective. The second enables proactive work, allowing a functional development of technical-professional training, as well as planning and encouraging innovation while contributing to productivity and competitiveness growth, among other things.”

In addition he gave examples of successful cases of collaboration agreements between public and private employment agencies. He stated that in dynamic and inclusive labour markets, private employment agencies are adequately regulated and that the correct framework to do this is by ratifying ILO’s Convention 181 on Private Employment Agencies.

After these lectures, the first panel discussion, called Public Policies on Human Capital Training, was started. In it, there were expositions made by the Executive Secretary of Chile Valora, Ximena Concha, and the Chief of the Department of Markets Development and Regulation of SENCE, Marcia Pardo.

The following panel discussion approached the subject on how to put in technical skills demanded by the industry into training processes. The panel counted with the participation of the deputy director of Educational Corporation APRIMIN, María Eugenia López and of the director of the Training Centre KOMATSU, Miguel Cuevas.

Another participant of ENEDUC 2014 was the vice president of Engineering and Maintenance at LATAM Airlines Group, Sebastián Acuto.