A clear development potential for better and timelier skills intelligence was established during a Cedefop workshop on skills governance in Slovenia.

The workshop, which was organised alongside the Slovenian Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities on 4 July, formally ended Cedefop’s support to Slovenia, which started in 2020 with a request for technical assistance in developing labour market forecasts and setting up a labour market platform.

It was the third event, following two virtual workshops in 2021, was held at Brdo Congress Centre, near Ljubljana, and presented an opportunity for national stakeholders to discuss the currently available skills intelligence and to reflect on how to improve it in the future.

Cedefop's Jasper van Loo gave a presentation about how the Agency defines, operationalises and disseminates skills intelligence for the European Union and explained why skills intelligence and governance are top priorities in the EU policy agenda.

He also showed why it is important to strengthen the governance of skills anticipation and matching and to move towards skills intelligence that – apart from being relevant to policy and practice – is timely and up to date, contextualised, and more skills- and transition-focused.

The presentation also revealed some fruitful results of a pre-workshop survey, to which 32 Slovene stakeholders had responded. The survey indicates that many stakeholders:

  • Are quite dissatisfied with the skills intelligence they currently have at their disposal;
  • acknowledge the lack of information about specific qualifications and skills people will need in the future;
  • call for timelier and up-to-date information on the green and digital transitions and for future labour market trends.

Findings from Cedefop’s European skills index

Cedefop's Ilias Livanos presented the findings of the 2022 European skills index (ESI) to showcase how one of the Agency’s key EU skills intelligence tools uses available statistical information to reflect on key aspects of a skills system, namely skills development, activation and matching.

He also discussed with the audience Slovenia’s comparative position in the index, while stakeholders present at the meeting shared their views on the reasons underlying the country's scores and were eager to learn more about the methodology and approach used to develop the index.

What stakeholders call for

The meeting also included separate group work on skills governance labs, which aimed at shaping a vision for skills intelligence and governance in Slovenia and pinpointing how that vision could be realised. These group-based brainstorm sessions led to a number of conclusions, among which:

  • Close cooperation between different ministries, the public employment service and other stakeholders is crucial.
  • Skills intelligence should be used more transversally to address socioeconomic trends, such as population ageing.
  • Data availability and approaches to address data gaps should be made key priorities for future development.
  • There is a need for sound skills intelligence, which not only can address policy needs, but also empower people and give them insight into promising career development as well as education and training options.
  • Such information should offer a short-, medium- and long-term perspective to understanding labour market trends and skills needs.

Mr van Loo closed the workshop highlighting the benefits of skills intelligence and its contribution to shaping learning-oriented jobs and societies, noting that the ideas and information collected during the event will be used in shaping future policy and practice.