Changing nature and organisation of work and the implications for VET in Australia

Profound changes are occurring in technology, work and work organisation, with equally profound implications for the future role of vocational education and training (VET) in Australia. These changes have six elements, all of which are interrelated and tend to affect one other:

• Globalisation is creating a more internationalised economy and culture. The cost of travel and communications have been dramatically reduced. Above all, the world is now networked with more intensive and extensive relationships at every level. The nation is still a key factor in the global environment; but industry, government and VET institutions must become totally engaged with the global environment or face obsolescence.

• International competition is driving an accelerated rate of technological change, above all, in information and communications, which are key sources of productivity advance. Networked computing is associated with a workplace that is both more integrated and more devolved, and requires higher levels of cognitive and interactive skills.

• Technology is associated with a sharp drop in skilled blue-collar work, a sharp rise in skilled and semi-skilled white-collar work, and no increase in jobs overall. The most advanced companies are shedding labour.

• There is immense but uneven organisational change. The post-Fordist vision of flatter structures, loose networks and stimulating work all round is not occurring, although workplaces based on high participation, strong teams and integrated, multi-skilled jobs do tend to make productivity gains.

• There has been a sharp increase in non-standard work, especially part-time and casual labour, and people working shorter or longer hours. There is also growth in 'telework' in the home, outsourcing and contracting out, and work for 'temping' agencies instead of stable employers. Most of this 'flexible' work is actually flexible only for the employer.

• There is a growing polarisation in incomes, in access to work and work security, and to technologies. There has been great growth in two-income families and no-income families, and a decline in one-income families.

The future of work will be shaped by technology, the capacity of labour, and change management. Training, along with research and development, work organisation and capital raising, will determine whether the Australian economy is a high-skill economy that provides for rising standards of living. The key elements in the future role of VET will be its capacity to integrate more closely with the workplace, and its capacity to integrate into the innovation cycle.

The aspect that has been under-estimated so far is on-the-job training — partly because it is difficult to identify where work ends and on-the-job training begins. (One study found that employer estimates of the amount of on-the-job training were 25 per cent higher than worker estimates.) On-the-job training leads to clear-cut productivity gains and is strongly supported by workers themselves. More use of mixed-mode (work/study) training programs is also essential.

If it can help to ease the passage into new technologies and speed the rate of their diffusion, VET can make a very major contribution to the competitiveness of Australian industry. Even more strategically significant is the development of a capacity in continuous innovation. Few firms are able to maintain this capacity and it is a major source of competitive advantage. It depends not only on flexible structures and on training at the cutting edge, but also the development of a workplace culture that is skill reflective — a workplace in which workers can put into practice their own judgements about the skills and knowledge they need to acquire in order to meet the needs of competition and technology.

To play this part, VET and its practitioners will need to become more global, better networked and closer to the technological edge in every industry. This is part of the 'public good' function of VET. In Australia, unlike most countries, the big firms — many of them the local branches of multinationals — tend to be weaker innovators than some of the small local firms. Yet the small firms do not have the capital they need. The role of government is therefore crucial, not least in supporting the targetted provision of general and industry training as required.

The role of government is important in other ways. A number of studies show that training opportunities tend to go to those with advanced levels of education (although this is less true at higher rates of technological change). Government and VET provide compensatory opportunities in an increasingly polarised setting. One of the major challenges before public policy in VET is to extend the policy network to non-standard workers. Given the growing role of this sector of the workforce, the provision of structured training is not only essential for equity reasons, it goes to the heart of future workforce quality.