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The stories presented in this publication provide insight into how the [International Labour Office] ILO-Irish Aid Partnership Programme on disability works with governments, the private sector, representatives of workers' and employers' organizations, organizations of disabled persons, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and others to forge new and innovative ways to include people with disabilities in the world of work.

Several promising interventions/approaches showcased through the stories contained in this collection could be replicated or scaled up, including supported employment for job seekers with intellectual disabilities, inclusive vocational education and training, and the establishment of national business and disability networks. In the process, this could help spread good practices in overcoming challenges faced by disabled persons in accessing skills development and employment. As the different initiatives and activities develop over time, [Promoting Rights and Opportunities for People with Disabilities in Employment through Legislation] PROPEL studies the lessons learned, applying the learning in the design of future actions to support employment of persons with disabilities, and also shares these widely for broader impact.

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In this report it is argued that in a third of local authorities that make up the eight city regions in the UK, no major employment sites (defined by having 5,000 or more jobs) are within a 20 minute commute by public transport and 80 per cent of these local authorities have an unemployment rate above the national average. The report suggests that making it easier for people, especially those on low incomes, to commute a further 20 minutes each way would put them within touch of two or more major employment sites, and potentially 10,000 more jobs. An extra 20 minutes would double the average commute but the attraction of better jobs and higher wages would be a reason to travel further.

The report puts forward a number of proposals for improving access to major cities. These include: offering tax benefits to commuters who use ride-sharing schemes and free parking in city centres for car sharing; the introduction of part-time rail tickets to reduce the fares for commuters who travel to work three or four days a week; the devolution of rail franchises to local transport bodies in city regions to encourage the spread of smart ticketing, and transferring responsibility for London's suburban commuter services to Transport for London; and devolving the commercial bus subsidy to local government to improve routes and bring down fares. The research also shows that smaller isolated cities and coastal towns cannot access any major employment centre within either a 20 or 40 minute public transport journey. These places struggle with persistently high unemployment and are effectively cut off from opportunities elsewhere. The report proposes that personalised welfare budgets and relocation packages to incentivise the best teachers to work in their schools can help people who live in these areas access jobs further afield.

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For most people, obtaining economic and social opportunities depends on access to labour-markets. Effective and flexible labour-markets allow economies to cope more easily with ageing and the disruptions of innovation and globalisation. Positive outcomes include the ability for women and men to reconcile work and family life adequately; young people's ability to make a smooth transition from education to work; and robust labour-market integration for immigrants, allowing them to become active contributors to the economy and the welfare state. Policymakers must strike a balance between preventive and corrective strategies. If a country fails to implement preventive measures, it must later make policy corrections on an ex post basis, which often entail very high costs.

A survey of 1,058 experts evaluates both the need for reform and actual reform performance, as measured by the frequency and quality of reform, within the EU-28 countries. The survey covers five areas of social inclusion, including poverty prevention, education, labour-market access, social cohesion and non-discrimination, and health. While there is significant variation across member states, experts perceive the most urgent need for reform in the area of improving access to labour-markets; however, reform performance here is middling at best.

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There has been considerable debate in recent years about the value of museum studies courses, but little formal study. This paper is based on a piece of research conducted in 2013 as part of a Museum Studies MA course undertaken by distance learning at the University of Leicester. The research aimed to provide data on the level of demand for museum studies qualifications from employers, and how qualifications are used as a criterion in recruitment. An analysis of job adverts was undertaken, to discover what percentage request a museum studies qualification, and employers were surveyed on their opinions of courses. The results of this study indicate that employers do not place a high value on museum studies qualifications when recruiting, and that demand for these qualifications has fallen over the last decade. The implications of these findings on the future of museum studies courses and entry-level training for the sector are discussed.

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This article reports on a research project aimed at investigating the effect of employment and a substantially increased fee level on student persistence and attrition at one of the two major New Zealand distance learning institutions, the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand. Student perceptions of fees’ importance are classified into five groups encompassing both economic and ‘education as investment’ considerations. Employer reimbursement of fees upon successful course completion was found to be a strong influential factor in student persistence. Show less

The relationship between career goals and decisions young people make about where to live is complex. Over the last ten years increasing numbers of young people are moving away from non-metro areas, often to pursue post-school education and employment opportunities. This short paper draws on the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) to compare the aspirations and attainment for young people from non-metro areas to metro areas. LSAY data shows that non-metro areas experienced a net loss of 18 per cent of their young people between 2006 and 2016. The data also allows for an examination of career aspirations and the extent to which they are realised. LSAY, in combination with other data sources, highlights a potential relationship between where young people live, their career aspirations, job availability, and post-school study choices.

Key findings are: (1) young Australians from both metro and non-metro areas have high career aspirations; in 2016 nearly two thirds of all young people wanted to work in the most highly skilled occupation groups, Managers and Professionals; (2) less than half of all young people were working in their desired occupation by age 25; (3) over 40 per cent of young people wanted to work as a Professional by age 30; young people from non-metro areas were more likely to move to a metro area if they aimed to work in the Professional occupation groups of Business, Human Resources and Marketing or Design, Science and Engineering where there were higher proportions of jobs in metro areas; (4) compared to those who move to undertake post-school study, young people who stay in non-metro areas are more likely to live there five years later; those who aspire to work in the Technicians and Trades occupation were less likely to move to a metro area and those living in a non-metro area were less likely to meet this career goal by age 25 than those living in a metro area.

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The objective of the study is to provide, through the construction of a series of career maps across a range of Member States, an overview and/or global estimates of the following: (1) Possible and actual career paths of seafarers; (2) Demand for seafarers at sea and in relevant shore-based maritime sectors, where information is available; and (3) Barriers to the mobility of qualified seafarers between the sectors.

The methodology for the project had the following main elements: (1) A review of existing literature and studies relevant to career mapping; (2) A series of interviews with key personnel from various maritime sectors in selected Member States. The following 10 Member States were selected for the study: Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom; and (3) The data from the interviews was analysed to create an individual report and a career map for each of the selected Member States.

In the course of the study, it became apparent that there are a number of similarities between maritime industries in the various Member States and a number of differences. The general findings of the study can therefore be described under these two broad headings. The similarities that are common to all the Member States are as follows: the personal qualities of successful seafarers in relation to both the nature of seafaring and to shore side employment; the reasons for choosing to go to sea initially; the reasons for staying at sea; the reasons for coming ashore; the general processes which seafarers undergo in order to progress their careers ashore; the barriers to coming ashore; and the mobility between sectors.

There are also a number of factors that are markedly different in each Member State. These factors are a function of the cultures of the individual country. The following common factors, which have an influence on seafaring careers and maritime industries, have been identified during the analysis for this study: the geography and location of the country; the strength of the family culture; and the maritime education and training system.

The individual country reports describe the main characteristics of the maritime sectors in each selected Member State. The career path maps that have been constructed for each country demonstrate that there is a wide range of possible career opportunities for seafarers ashore. The maps also demonstrate that the take-up of opportunities vary from one State to another. All the maps give an indication as to how the maritime clustering works in each Member State and some show the extent to which the cluster has been formalised. The maps also demonstrate the flows of manpower throughout the maritime industry and thus provide indications of the demand for seafarers.

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Despite an abundance of educated, qualified women in the workforce, they continue to be underrepresented at the top of institutional leadership hierarchies. Theories of gendered organizations explain that work processes reproduce gendered structures of society in the workplace. These processes advantage men while forming barriers to women's success. This paper extends critical human resource development (HRD) theory by applying the concept of sexism hidden in the workplace to leadership and by outlining both social and organizational practices that create gender inequities in leadership. [The authors'] cross-sector analysis of women leaders in religion and higher education revealed 27 gender-based leadership barriers which operate at the macro, meso, and micro levels of society. [The authors] argue that most current efforts to promote women into leadership focus one by one on only a few barriers, primarily those within organizations, while failing to take into account the wide variety of barriers and their prevalence across all societal levels. [The authors] offer strategies to address barriers across all three levels to help organizations create gender-equitable leadership environments.

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The Australian Federal Government established the Advisory Panel on the Economic Potential of Senior Australians on 30 March 2011 to examine how Australia can best harness the opportunities that much larger, and more active, communities of older Australians bring. The panel wants to consider how Australia can capitalise on the varied life experiences and intellectual capital of all senior Australians. This is one of a series of reports released by the Panel. It draws on work done by the Consultative Forum on Mature Age Participation. The forum was established in 2010 to provide government with advice on evidence-based and practical solutions to address barriers to employment participation for mature age people. The forum is examining issues including employer and community attitudes toward mature age people, age-based discrimination, re-skilling and career transitions, mentoring, suitability of training, and retaining the expertise of older workers. The barriers to mature age participation outlined in this report are based on research into facilitating the workforce participation of older Australians prepared by the forum. Show less

Skill mismatches have strong negative effects on productivity, job satisfaction, and other outcomes. To reduce skill mismatches, governments need to rely on accurate data on the prevalence of these mismatches. The Programme of the International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC) is currently the most important data source providing excellent and unparalleled information for many countries on two key information-processing skills (i.e., literacy and numeracy skills). However, although these data contain rich information about possessed skills, countries lack directly comparable information on the required skills in those domains. Hence, it has been difficult to use the PIAAC data to identify skill mismatches, other than through proxies of required skills (e.g., the average skill level in occupations) or workers' self-assessments of skill mismatch.

In this paper, we use the Job Analysis Method (JAM) to determine the required skill levels of literacy and numeracy for all 4-digit ISCO08 unit groups of occupations in the same metric and scale as was used in PIAAC. JAM involves the use of occupational experts to rate the skill requirements in the different occupations. JAM has never been used before to identify required skill levels for literacy and numeracy as measured in PIAAC, and the paper thus presents the first results on the prevalence of skill shortages and skill surpluses in these key information-processing skills across different OECD countries and across different occupations and sectors that is based on a more direct estimate of the required skills. We provide estimates for the proportions of well-matched, overskilled and underskilled workers per country, and compare these with estimates based on alternative methods for estimating skill mismatch. We also compare JAM with these other methods in explaining wage differentials, as well as job satisfaction. We conclude that there are large differences in the estimates of the prevalence of skill mismatches depending on the method used. We show several advantages using JAM and discuss some of the limitations as well.

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