Reader’s guide

The Local Job Creation project involves a series of country reviews in Australia, Belgium (Flanders), Canada, Czech Republic, France, Ireland, Israel, Italy (Autonomous Province of Trento), Korea, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States (California and Michigan). The key stages of each review are summarised in Box 1.

Box 1. Summary of the OECD LEED Local Job Creation Project Methodology

  • Analyse available data to understand the key labour market challenges facing the country in the context of the economic recovery and apply an OECD LEED diagnostic tool which seeks to assess the balance between the supply and demand for skills at the local level.

  • Map the current policy framework for local job creation in the country.

  • Apply the local job creation dashboard, developed by the OECD LEED Programme (Froy et al, 2010) to measure the relative strengths and weaknesses of local employment and training agencies in contributing to job creation.

  • Distribute an electronic questionnaire to local labour offices (poviat labour offices in Poland) to gather information on how they work with other stakeholders to support local job creation policies.

  • Conduct an OECD study visit, where local and national roundtables with a diverse range of stakeholders are held to discuss the results and refine the findings and recommendations.

  • Contribute to policy development in the reviewed country by proposing policy options to overcome barriers, illustrated by selected good practice initiatives from other OECD countries.

While furthering the recovery from the economic crisis remains a focus of policy-makers, there is a need for both short-term and longer-term actions to ensure sustainable economic growth. In response to this issue, the OECD LEED Programme has developed a set of thematic areas on which local stakeholders and employment and training agencies can focus efforts. These include:

  1. Better aligning policies and programmes to local economic development challenges and opportunities;

  2. Adding value through skills: Creating an adaptable skilled labour force and supporting employment progression and skills upgrading;

  3. Targeting policy to local employment sectors and investing in quality jobs, including gearing education and training to emerging local growth sectors and responding to global trends, while working with employers on skills utilisation and productivity; and,

  4. Being inclusive to ensure that all actual and potential members of the labour force can contribute to future economic growth.

Local Job Creation Dashboard

As part of the project, the LEED Programme has drawn on its previous research to develop a set of best practice priorities in each thematic area, which is used to assess local practice through the local job creation dashboard (see Box 2). The dashboard enables national and local policy-makers to gain a stronger overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the current policy framework, whilst better prioritising future actions and resources. A value between 1 (low) to 5 (high) is assigned to each of the four priority areas corresponding to the relative strengths and weaknesses of local policy approaches based on best practices in other OECD countries.

Box 2. Local Job Creation Dashboard

Better aligning policies and programmes to local economic development

  1. 1.1. Flexibility in the delivery of employment and vocational training policies

  2. 1.2. Capacities within employment and VET sectors

  3. 1.3. Policy co-ordination, policy integration and co-operation with other sectors

  4. 1.4. Evidence based policy making

Adding value through skills

  1. 2.1. Flexible training open to all in a broad range of sectors

  2. 2.2. Working with employers on training

  3. 2.3. Matching people to jobs and facilitating progression

  4. 2.4. Joined up approaches to skills

Targeting policy to local employment sectors and investing in quality jobs

  1. 3.1. Relevance of provision to important local employment sectors and global trends and challenges

  2. 3.2. Working with employers on skills utilisation and productivity

  3. 3.3. Promotion of skills for entrepreneurship

  4. 3.4. Promoting quality jobs through local economic development

Being inclusive

  1. 4.1. Employment and training programmes geared to local “at-risk” groups

  2. 4.2. Childcare and family friendly policies to support women’s participation in employment

  3. 4.3. Tackling youth unemployment

  4. 4.4. Openness to immigration

The approach for Poland

This study has looked at the range of institutions and bodies involved in workforce and skills development in Poland. In-depth analysis based on document reviews and interviews with key stakeholders was undertaken to look at local employment and economic development activities in two geographic regions:

  • the Radomski sub-region; and

  • the Poznań sub-region.

In each case study area, interviews were conducted with a wide set of stakeholders. An electronic questionnaire was also sent to managers of poviat labour offices across Poland, which requested information on their management, capacities, and activities. The questionnaire was administrated during the summer of 2015 and the results are based on 208 valid responses (see Appendix A). In July 2015, local roundtables were held in each of the case study areas and at the national level to discuss the findings and recommendations. These meetings brought together a range of stakeholders, including relevant department officials in the fields of employment, economic development, and training; employers; and other local community and social development organisations.

References

Froy, F., S. Giguère and E. Travkina (2010), Local Job Creation: Project Methodology, OECD Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED), OECD, Paris, www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/Local%20Job%20Creation %20Methodology_27%20February.pdf.