Occupational mobility and skills transferability of worker in transition: systems, perceptions and processes - support document 3

The following report presents the findings of the third stage of a three stage research project investigating cross-occupational skills transfer-meaning occupational mobility that involves little or no additional training and depends heavily upon transferable skills from one occupational context to another (European Commission 2011). It builds on stages one and two which investigated (1) the employment implications of the economic transformation and industrial restructuring occurring in Australia currently and over the past decade or so, and (2) the architecture of the Australian VET system and its capacity to deliver skills that are transferable enough to enable job seekers to find work across different occupations and sectors. The findings from these stages of the study show that recent industrial restructuring across the economy has caused a drastic reorganisation of industries, with many traditional sectors declining, leading to significant job losses. Since the new emerging industries are considerably different in terms of their operations and skills needs, the conclusion is that retrenched workers require highly transferable skills to enable them to find new work. An analysis of the training system reveals that in its basic architecture key employability skills are embedded at the core of every qualification, enabling the system to deliver reasonably transferable skills. However, the extent of such transferability must be understood within the context of similar occupations or occupational clusters.