The OECD’s recently launched Digital Economy Outlook contains calls for affordable or free training programmes, tackling the digital gender gap and engaging with trade unions on skills. The OECD calls on the governments to:
• Provide “access to affordable or free training programmes and scholarships, especially for people on low income, and support initiatives such as public libraries, community centres and online platforms that offer educational resources”; and
• “Engage in social dialogue with trade unions’’ to “improve the effective functioning of skill systems”.
It also calls on businesses to “create a conducive environment for continuous learning and skill development” and emphasises that “employers need to invest in employees to help them gain and maintain the skills needed in the workplace”.
Noting that “gender gaps in technical fields emerge early in life and persist throughout women’s professional careers” the OECD warns that “the consequences of inaction are clear – lower productivity, slower growth and increasing inequality”. The publication underscores that “[a]ction is urgently needed to close the ICT skills gap, promote female entrepreneurship, and catalyse female ICT innovators and inventions.”
To tackle inequalities in digital occupations, the OECD highlights the importance of “publicly funded career guidance services” in encouraging women to undertake STEM studies. The publication also points to the need to “cover the direct and indirect costs of training, as well as ensuring the availability of flexible learning opportunities” to address some of the barriers women may face in participating in training.
Less helpfully, the publication rather over-emphasises individual willingness and motivation as a central factor in participation in training, without much discussion of the barriers adults may face and what is needed to address these.
While acknowledging the importance of social dialogue with unions on skills training, there is also no recognition of the role of unions in negotiating a right to training, and paid training leave, in collective agreements.
The OECD further claims that “digital technologies revolutionise traditional learning mechanisms” and “improve education systems and … delivery”, without any discussion of the risks posed by the growing use of digital technologies in learning and training systems. These include the potential for AI to exacerbate inequalities in adult learning, including by embedding and scaling-up pre-existing human biases.
“It is helpful that the OECD calls for governments to provide access to affordable or free training for digital skills development and recognises the need for employers to invest in their workers, but it is a pity that it fails to support a right to training or paid training leave.
