By Martín Padulla* for staffiingamericalatina

The erroneous concept of labor outsourcing includes companies that provide workforce solutions. These companies create formal employment and train in demand-based competencies.

George Burns, a famous American comedian, now deceased, used to say: “I look to the future because that is where I will spend the rest of my days”.

This phrase, which may raise a smile, contains at its core the interesting thing about the future: we do not know what it will be like, but it can only be thought of from the present. Never from the past.

In our region we are currently witnessing a public conversation in which a considerable number of social actors insist on looking at the past. Many even yearn for it and try to bring it into the present.

As far as the world of work is concerned, technological convergence, population aging, migration, diversity, the fourth industrial revolution, diverse forms of work and the pandemic have generated a true metamorphosis. Work is definitely not what it used to be. Looking at the past as far as work is concerned, only serves to write essays of a historical nature. Any other practical use of this retrospective look will only result in exclusion, backwardness, lack of opportunities, informality and unemployment.

Latin America has not modernized its labor markets and the consequence is informality and exclusion. While our societies urgently demand strategies that look forward with a humanistic perspective, there are voices that seek to restrict the few references that provide flexibility, security and formality for workers and companies.
Since the future is not a destiny but a construction, it is necessary to start with the essentials.

In recent years, we have become familiar with the concept of essentiality. What is essential is that which is important and necessary, in such a way that it cannot be dispensed with.

The companies that provide workforce solutions in the world and in our region have more than demonstrated their essential nature during the pandemic. The contribution they have made has been notorious in aspects such as:
– Benefiting individuals, companies and society in general.
– Quickly connecting people to formal jobs
– Facilitating demand-driven skills training
– Increasing employability
– Providing adequate support during transitions
– Decrease informality
– Promote inclusion
– To be the best prepared and most organized platform globally to administer different types of employment contracts.

In some countries of the region, part of the political debate is questioning organizations that generate these contributions, even in countries such as Mexico and Peru, the social role they play has been restricted. They do so, I reiterate and emphasize, in contexts of high informality, a significant gap between the skills demanded by the labor market vs. those available to job seekers and, in the Mexican case, in the midst of a pandemic.
The voices that question the various forms of work cling to the type of labor model of the twentieth century that today represents only 26% of employment in the world. The open-ended contract is not enough to meet the needs of workers and companies in the 21st century.

These essential companies, which are viewed with suspicion by this biased vision of the world of work, can play an even more important role in the social contract of the 21st century. They can become the most efficient career developers for our countries; they have the knowledge and experience to guide workers in their careers and help them in their transitions, offering a range of functional alternatives for the different stages of their lives. Adding career developers will be an essential condition to aspire to development in a knowledge-based economy.

This economy requires shared efforts and an intelligent public-private articulation. Pragmatism to apply proven formulas that work in the most modern, dynamic and formal labor markets in the world.
These formulas, of course, include efficient control and supervision by the State. No one who puts capital, labor and enormous effort at stake wants unfair competition or players whose bad practices discredit a sector that generates triple impact. Ratifying ILO Convention 181 on private employment agencies is a way of doing so, it implies control and joint work. It implies giving greater importance to that which is important and necessary, to that which cannot be dispensed with.

Those who create formal jobs, offer flexible solutions with full labor rights for workers and empower them, training them in demand-based skills, cannot be anything other than strategic allies of the governments in power. Developing a joint strategy between public and private employment services to implement active policies is an obligation for those who manage employment-related variables from the public sphere. To question them is an anachronism and an unacceptable ignorance in those who hold public office. To serve society it is necessary to have the relevant skills.
Latin American talent deserves to be able to project its future in the region. Governments should offer alternatives to take advantage of this talent and not give it up so easily to other regions that no longer discuss the squaring of the circle.

*Sociologist (USAL) – MBA (UCA)