Occupational standards are recognised documents that define the skills, abilities and attitudes that workers in an occupation must possess to effectively carry out their tasks (OECD, 2023[1]). Similarly, training standards serve as crucial benchmarks that define a course’s learning objectives and make sure that learners have developed the necessary skills and knowledge to be competent in a given occupation. Employers rely on these standards to define tasks and responsibilities, set recruitment criteria, and develop internal training programmes. This ensures that employees have the requisite skills and knowledge to boost firms’ productivity and innovation. For individuals, standards provide clear guidelines on the skills and competencies needed to succeed in various occupations, thereby serving as a roadmap for career development. For policy makers, occupational and training standards help address skill mismatches.
Over the past years, OECD economies have faced important shifts – such as fast advances in artificial intelligence and urgent calls for a net-zero transition – that brought along rapid changes in the skills needed to adapt and succeed in the labour market. In this constantly evolving context, governments need to step up their efforts to keep occupational and training standards relevant. In particular, the timely production of occupational and training standards requires a clear allocation of tasks and responsibilities, well-structured processes, adequate human and financial resources and strong collaboration between relevant stakeholders to be able to continuously review and update standards to reflect the realities of labour markets. It is also crucial that the formulation and revision of these standards are underpinned by sound data and evidence on labour market needs, including through skills assessment and anticipation exercises, while considering the context in which the profession takes place, including its economic, regulatory, and learning environments to ensure the alignment of training provision to labour market needs.
Yet, policy makers are offered little guidance on how to produce high-quality occupational and training standards. The fragmented and decentralised nature of these processes, coupled with the multitude of stakeholders involved – including government agencies, industry associations, education and training institutions, and professional bodies – make information gathering and benchmarking difficult. Additionally, the methods and criteria for establishing standards can differ widely between countries and even within regions of the same country, further complicating the landscape.
This report represents a pioneering effort to compile and analyse the diverse approaches to occupational and training standards production in Europe, marking a significant and innovative contribution to understanding how to improve the relevance of workforce development practices to labour market needs. Good practice examples are identified based on the following five criteria:
Responsiveness to labour market needs entails that occupational and training standards reflect the realities of labour markets and are based on an analysis of current and future skill needs in various sectors. Ensuring that standards are responsive to labour market requirements is key to maintaining a skilled and competitive workforce and meeting the dynamic needs of employers.
Timeliness means that the production and update of standards occurs within a reasonable timeframe. Timeliness is vital in the context of constantly evolving labour markets, as it ensures that the skills and competencies they encompass are current and relevant. Delayed updates or slow response to changing trends can lead to a widening skill gap, where the workforce skills are outdated or misaligned with market needs.
Agility means that standards remain relevant even after slight changes in the tasks performed by workers, for instance because of the introduction of new machinery. A certain degree of agility implies that standards require less frequent updates. Yet, while it is important that occupational and training standards are not too rigid and allow enough flexibility to adapt to rapid changes in the labour market, they should also provide clear information on required skills and knowledge.
User-friendliness enables accessibility and practical utility of standards. User-friendly occupational and training standards facilitate better decision-making in career development, curriculum design, and workforce planning. By presenting information in a standardised, accessible format, they also help maintain consistency across various training programmes and institutions.
Quality assurance and oversight mechanisms play an important role to ensure that occupational and training standards are labour market relevant, timely, agile, and user-friendly and foster accountability and transparency. Trust between involved stakeholders contributes to strong ownership and buy-in and facilitates co‑operation.
Based on these criteria and following documentary research and semi-structured interviews with government representatives and experts, six case studies have been selected to inform the content of the report, namely Flanders, France, French-speaking Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. In its analysis, this report pays particular attention to production timeframes, procedures to revise existing standards, and the way different stakeholders are involved in these processes. The preliminary findings and analyses presented in the report have been also discussed with European experts at a peer-learning workshop which was held in Brussels in January 2024.
The rest of this report is structured as follows. Sections 2 to 7 present the case studies in detail. Each of these case studies includes concrete examples and insights on the production, update, and use of occupational and training standards. The report analyses processes, stakeholders, timelines, governance, funding arrangements and requirements for the production, update and use of occupational and training standards and explores the links between these and education and training. Section 8 concludes with a hands-on discussion on the key considerations that policy makers need to reflect on to improve their current standard-setting systems.