HRM and skills development - January 2019

Growing shortages of skilled personnel
According to Statistics Netherlands CBS (in Dutch), at the end of 2018 a quarter of enterprises in the Netherlands suffered from a shortage of sufficiently qualified personnel. In a new report (in Dutch, 557 kB) ABN AMRO (in Dutch) adds that companies in the transport and service sectors in particular regard the growing shortage of personnel 'with specific knowledge' as an obstacle to further growth. Skills Panorama states that according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) database "Skills for Jobs", over a third (36%) of workers are currently insufficiently geared to the requirements of their job (which may be too high or too low). You can find more information in the OECD report (2.45 MB).

Sustainable employment and deployment up to the year 2030
CEDEFOP has published a new report (1.64 MB) with the title ‘Skills forecast - trends and challenges to 2030’. According to the report, the EU labour force will increase and services sectors will be the main drivers of employment growth in 2016-30. The analysis also points to a shift towards more autonomy, less routine, more information and communication technologies, fewer physical tasks and more social and intellectual tasks in the forecast period to 2030.
Consultancy PwC warns in a report (2.48 MB) that the business community does not do enough to retain talented employees, in particular by creating a positive-challenging work environment for them. More data analysis needs to be done, according to PwC.
In 2017, over 1.7 million people in the Netherlands between the ages of 25 and 65 years participated in a form of adult learning. This concerned formal education such as secondary vocational education (MBO) or higher professional education (HBO), as well as courses and workshops. This is evident from newly released figures by Statistics Netherlands CBS on adult participation in learning.

Working more safely with chemical substances
The European Chemicals Agency ECHA reports on an enforcement project in which Europe-wide nearly 900 inspections were carried out for 1435 dangerous substances. The project aimed to analyse the way in which companies pass on safety information - in particular via the Safety Data Sheet SDS - about this type of substances to their customers. The main finding of the project was that while companies have the systems in place to communicate information on safe use in the supply chain, the quality of this information needs to be significantly improved in order to create truly safe working conditions. You can read more in the ECHA report (1.05 MB).

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