Profesinių standartų diegimo reikšmė Lietuvos ūkio subjektų žmogiškojo potencialo didinimui

Abstract

The paper aims to clarify the importance of national occupational standards for the development of the human resource potential in the enterprises of Lithuania. The problem of research lies in the existing mismatch of the supply and demand of skills in the labour market and negative implications of this mismatch for the development of economy in general and development of human capital in the enterprises. Occupational standards and other instruments for the management of the national systems of qualifications are regarded as instruments designed to solve these problems and to improve the matching between supply and demand of skills and qualifications in the labour market. The aim of this paper is to disclose the importance of designing and implementation of occupational standards for the sustainable development of economy and development of potential of the human capital in the enterprises. This aim was achieved by: 1. Defining the role of enterprises and organisations in the implementation and development of the instruments for regulation and management of qualifications in Lithuania. 2. Disclosing the relationships between human resource management, implementation of occupational standards and development of the national system of qualifications. 3. Identifying current and potential contribution of the sectoral business associations to the designing of occupational standards and implementation of Lithuanian Qualifications Framework. 4. Analysing specific features of the participation of enterprises in the designing of occupational standards and implementation of Lithuanian Qualifications Framework. 5. Providing arguments of the benefit of occupational standards to the business, individuals and society. Research methodology integrates various methods of research: literature review, contents analysis of documents, in-depth interviews with the representatives of the sectoral business associations and structured interviews with the human resource management specialists of enterprises. The research was conducted in the three sectors: chemical industry, printing industry and food industry. Interviews with sectoral stakeholders and enterprises disclosed that business associations and enterprises are very passively and marginally involved in the process of designing and implementation of national instruments for management of qualifications. Therefore there are considered and suggested different measures that could change the attitude of employers and make them more active in this process. The representatives of enterprises indicated rather big contribution of ineffective vocational guidance to the current problem of shortage of skilled workforce in certain sectors of economy. Introduction of occupational standards and Lithuanian Qualification Framework can help to overcome these problems only if the sectoral stakeholders and enterprises will be actively involved in the design and implementation of these instruments. In order to involve these business stakeholders it is necessary to disclose and prove the potential benefits of occupational standards to business and employees.