INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT ORGANISATIONS 27TH WORLD CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION

The overall Theme you have chosen for your Conference - Revitalising Human Resource Development - a Vision for the New Millennium - is both timely and pertinent. As the 21st century approaches, the world is in the middle of deep and fundamental economic and social change. The underlying forces of global change are rooted in new technologies, new forms of economic and political organisation in individual nation-states, the increased liberalisation of international trade and an increasing acceptance of the need to ensure that development is sustainable. The immediate consequence of these changes is increased competition. The intensity of that competition is increasing and will continue to do so as the geographical pattern of production diffuses internationally and as the movement of goods, services and capital between countries increases.

At the heart of this new competitive era is the concept of innovation. For it is innovation, which can be defined as the application of knowledge to the development of new business opportunities, that will be the key determinant of competitive success in the future. And central to the capacity of enterprises to be innovative are the skills and knowledge of the labour-force. Investment in the development of human resources is increasingly important - indeed critical - in securing competitive advantage for both firms and nations in the knowledge-driven global economy of the present day.

We can see the emergence of the new knowledge and skills based economy at a range of levels. We see it through the changes taking place in industry itself.

Manufacturing and assembly are declining in importance within the industry value chain. Research and product development are of growing importance at the pre-production phase and marketing and customer service are growing in the post-production stage. Supply chain management is increasingly becoming a key component of comparative advantage. The nature and content of the service sector is changing rapidly and the sector has emerged as an increasing source of international trade and local employment opportunity.

Production processes and work-organisations are also undergoing significant change. Old style production lines characterised by strict division of labour in a tightly controlled process are giving way to more creative team-working with multiskilling and devolved responsibility. These trends are set to continue as the application of new technologies spread.

The world of work is also changing rapidly as industry becomes increasingly knowledge-based, requiring more highly-skilled management and labour. The demand for unskilled and semi-skilled labour is declining sharply. The search for quality and efficiency as a tool of competitiveness is driving new forms of work organisation yielding major advances in enterprise productivity. Traditional patterns of employment are changing, with full-time permanent jobs giving way to part-time employment, contract work and increased labour mobility. The rise of knowledge-based industries and the rapidity of technical change require workforces to be committed to continuous and lifelong learning.

The skills required to support this new economic order are radically different to what they were even 20 years ago. Underpinning specific skills needs in the new work environment must be a new range of broad skills, including competence in communication and foreign languages, broad science and technology literacy, problem solving and synthesis skills, learning abilities and memory training. Attitudes in terms of openness to change, initiative, self-motivation and a strong customer focus will also be important in all occupations. And the pace of change - and the imperative to update existing skills and develop new skills - will accelerate. It has been estimated that, in 10 years time, 80% of the technology in use in business in Europe will be different to what it is today but that 80% of the work-force that will use it are already part of today's workforce. The implications are clear: in order to survive and prosper firms must invest to a greater extent in the development of their human resources than has been the case in the past. Indeed, for each firm, the aim must be to become a "learning organisation" that continuously develops its human resources.

The learning organisation is a total Human Resource Development model in which all employees take part in daily learning experiences through, for example, problem-solving teams and autonomously operating project groups. A learning organisation can compete effectively through a capability to evolve, adapt and to innovate. It is also about creating a positive disposition on the part of individuals and firms to the continuing acquisition and renewal of learning and skills.

In responding to this new order, firms must have regard to increasing evidence that a partnership approach between management and workers is of key importance in developing and maintaining an effective human resource development strategy which helps to achieve long-run competitive advantage. New and difficult responsibilities also arise for trade unions and other worker representatives who will have to represent their members in an environment where change and flexibility in the work-place are necessary elements in sustaining employment and income levels.

There is also a need to ensure that, in the work-place of today and of tomorrow, where change is endemic and the need for new skills is a continuous process, a commitment to life-long learning is pervasive.

Individuals will need to develop a "personal portfolio" of skills and attitudes that are continuously upgraded to ensure their "employability" over a working life-time in which the concept of a "job for life", in any particular area of activity or business, will no longer hold.

So how have we in Ireland been seeking to respond to this new era?

In Ireland knowledge and learning have always been highly-prized for their own innate worth. The widespread cultivation of knowledge and the diffusion of education are hallmarks of civilised, cohesive and progressive societies. More recently, the pivotal role of knowledge, education and training in the process of economic expansion has been rediscovered. Modern economics identifies the stock of human capital - the knowledge and skills embedded in the population - and investments in human resource development as among the most important determinants in the process of sustained economic advance.

A good education system is fundamental to the content, quality and relevance of national human capital. Ireland has invested heavily in the provision of education over the past thirty years. Since the early 1960s, the share of publicly-funded education in Gross National Product has more than doubled, rising from 2.8% in 1961 to over 6% in 1996. Over the same period the volume of Irish GNP itself has increased more than fivefold. That investment is now paying dividends and many economic commentators attribute much of our current economic success to a plentiful supply of well educated labour.

Likewise, we have been quite successful in attracting inward investment, particularly in the high-tech areas, to this country. The availability of a well educated flexible and adaptable workforce is usually cited as a highly important factor in the range of considerations which foreign investors take into account in determining where to locate.

We have also been extremely fortunate in Ireland to have been in a position to benefit from the assistance of the European Social Fund at a particularly critical stage in our development.

The ESF provides European Union co-funding on a major scale for programmes which develop or regenerate people's employability, both at individual and at company level. This task centres on providing citizens with the right workskills as well as developing their social interaction skills, thereby improving their self-confidence and adaptability in the job marketplace. There is a major emphasis on programmes to assist disadvantaged people and help stimulate entrepreneurial skills. I like to feel that we in Ireland have made practical and efficient use of this support and that this particular investment in people will continue to bear fruit well into the future.

We cannot rest on our laurels. If we did, we would be in danger of becoming victims of our own success. The rapid economic growth of recent years has led to a situation where skills shortages were beginning to manifest in certain sectors. The general supply of labour has also been tightening. If the skills and labour supply issues are not adequately addressed, there will undoubtedly be problems for the economy. The growth potential will be limited and wage pressure will emerge in the labour market leading to adverse cost implications which would be negative for the global competitiveness of the economy.

Having recognised that the skills issue is one of the critical facing the economy, we have put in place instruments to ensure that it can be addressed in time. I would mention in particular the Business, Education and Training Partnership which we have put in place to develop national strategies to tackle the skills needs issue. Key elements of this initiative include an Expert Group on Future Skills Needs, a Business, Education and Training Partnership Forum which acts as a consultative vehicle involving all interests relating to future skills needs, and a high level Implementation Group to make sure that identified needs are responded to in an expeditious and effective way.

We have just recently received the first report of the Expert Group dealing with the high technology sector and steps are in train to ensure that the needs identified are responded to.

At a broader level we undertook over the past couple of years an in-depth analysis of national human resource policy in the form of a White Paper on Human Resource Development. This White Paper also proposed a new policy framework and a set of policy instruments aimed at strengthening commitment to human resource development. Its focus ranged from addressing the needs of industry to the needs of the individual, it identified the role and responsibility of each as well as the role of the State in creating a new understanding about the increasing importance of human resource development for economic development; the strategy on which it was founded was based on a three pillar framework aimed at

• underpinning competitiveness through investment in skills
• facilitating full participation by individuals in gainful employment through helping them develop their knowledge and skill
• delivering State interventions of the highest quality to yield permanent benefit in a cost effective way.

Many of the initiatives and prescriptions set out in that White Paper have been adopted and are in the process of implementation while others have informed new policy development. As an example I would mention the new Enterprise support Agency that I am establishing - Enterprise Ireland - aimed at supporting high growth potential and export oriented indigenous companies. We have integrated into the range of supports which this agency will deliver responsibility for developing the human resource potential of its client companies. This contrasts with the situation which prevailed heretofore where we had a separate agency responsible for delivering HR development supports. This is in recognition of the fact that, more often than not, for companies to move into a high growth trajectory they need an integrated package of supports rather than a set of individual supports. I have concentrated in the main in my discourse here to-day on the needs of business and the challenges it faces in the rapidly changing global economy.

There is another dimension to human resource development which it would be remiss of me not to mention and that is its relevance to those at the margins of the labour market. Notwithstanding major employment growth in recent years, we still have a significant level of unemployment which currently stands at around 9.3%. Indeed this is a major problem at European Union level where some 18 million people are unemployed, some 9 million are long term unemployed, and each year some 4 million people are crossing the one year unemployment threshold. There is a major structural component to this unemployment, manifested in the form of low levels of educational and skills attainment. The danger is that the people concerned will be increasingly excluded from the dignity of employment in the knowledge based economy and society which is emerging. The solution has to lie in giving them the skills and the training which will enhance their opportunities to access the jobs which we are creating. This is no easy or simple task. Many may not even have the basic literacy or numeracy skills which would allow them to access and benefit from higher level training provision; many may have deep rooted personal esteem problems deriving from their socially excluded status. A whole compendium of progression pathway responses may be needed, frequently over an extended period of time, to bring them to the stage when they are job ready. Even then they may face what is sometimes called employer prejudice.

Many of you here to-day are Human Resource Managers in companies large and small. Circumstances of course differ in the many countries you come from but I have no doubt that you all in one fashion or another face the same kind of issue with respect to recruitment of disadvantaged persons from time to time.

I would simply ask that you would reflect on your recruitment policies and see what steps you can take to ensure that "employer prejudice" against disadvantaged people is not a feature; and that indeed you would make it a conscious policy to include a positive discrimination component in favour of such people in your recruitment policies.