ILO’s Programme Officer for the Southern Cone stated the importance of involving every sector to generate more human capital. Private Employment Agencies can become key strategic allies

Advancing in the diversification of the production model and developing more human capital by working with every sector of society seem to be some of the challenges Chile is facing.

Patricia Roa, ILO’s Programme Officer for the Southern Cone, established this idea during the Seminar “Labour (in) formality, employment quality, social protection”, developed by Sura and Aipef.

“If we do not diversify our production model we will face productivity problems. This is a main challenge that involves integration between labour and economy integration”, said Roa.

“It is not possible to solve everything only using the law. As a matter of fact, we have a human capital deficit that is key for the transition from informality to formality, as well as to increase workers employability”, stated the ILO’s Officer.

She pointed out that productivity is a public-private matter as “public policies have a limitation if they do not have a determined counterpart providing support to address the issue”.

Using as an example several cases of public-private cooperation from all over the world, she added: “we have witnessed successful experiences of social agreements where countries commit to increase their productivity and have achieve their goals through cooperation. This issue cannot be accomplished by relying only on a certain government management or on just one sector of society.”

Taking into account the importance of cultural aspects when designing public-private articulation strategies, she stated that “maybe the Chilean model is having trouble addressing the complexity of a multidimensional phenomenon”. However, countries will not overcome challenges if they do not do several things at the same time. One of our most important recommendations for Chile is about training as a mean to include populations that are left out of competitive sectors.”

The articulation between public employment agencies and private employment agencies is very important to address key issues such as informality, training based of demand during transitions and employability.

Ratification of ILO’s Convention 181 on private employment agencies would enable the articulation of coordinated policies to strengthen youth employment and to develop more human capital.

An Employability Observatory that provides information on the skills the labour market will demand in the short, medium and long term would be an interesting complement to move forward towards a more inclusive and dynamic labour market.