Healthy and Productive Work: An International Perspective

Scotland’s “Middling” Productivity – An International Perspective

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The committee could not in the time available for its work evaluate the effectiveness of American in comparison with foreign training. Those who extol the virtues of training abroad frequently cite three key features of foreign training systems: close connections to employers, national systems of skills standards and skills certification, and pathways along which young people move in comparatively straightforward fashion from school to work.

To get an idea of the different ways training systems might design these features, we looked at the approaches used in Australia, Britain, Germany, and Japan. It is critical to note, however, that national differences in the design of education and training institutions and in political, economic, and social environments preclude any simplistic notions of comparability and transferability of foreign training practices.

The most obvious difficulty is that. Even when educational or training institutions appear to be similar, differences in levels of prior preparation confound comparison. In Japan, for example, some observers note e. If there are wide differences in achievement levels of secondary school graduates, it becomes harder to compare the performance of different postsecondary training systems by comparing student outcomes Stevenson, In addition, school-trained Americans will be likely to have different sets of skills than their company-trained German and Japanese counterparts Marshall and Tucker, Good data for comparing postsecondary training and skill levels across nations are lacking, in part because of the difficulty of collecting equivalent and reliable information on such topics as school achievement, formal classroom training within firms, and informal, on-the-job training Kochan and Osterman, ; Bradburn and Gilford, Difficulties in comparison also result from national differences in political, economic, and social structures and traditions.

Government policies supporting high minimum wage levels, as in Germany, give employers a larger stake in training highly skilled workers who can justify high wages than the stake of employers in countries where they can pay less. Lifetime employment guarantees, a tradition in large Japanese firms, similarly encourage employers to provide training without fear of losing their investment if workers leave. Osterman Ch. Given that a careful and comprehensive evaluation of comparative training systems and their results was beyond the committee's charge, we set modest goals for our international analyses.

We looked at overseas training systems in the hope of learning something about how other countries approach the three key features noted above. We aimed at broadening our perspective rather than finding definitive answers to the problems we have identified in American training.

Foreign training systems feature strong links to employers. In the countries we examined there are efforts to involve employers in training and to require businesses to invest in training, both for entering and for current workers.

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Qualifying training in those countries is characterized by far greater employer involvement than is true in the United States. Germany and Japan have well-established, though quite different, approaches, with the former relying on work-based training and the latter emphasizing close ties between schools and firms. Australia and Britain have over the past 15 years sought to engage employers in preparing people for the workplace, though they chose quite different methods and experienced varying degrees of success.

As in the United States, training for individuals already at work is largely the responsibility of firms, but we find evidence in Australia, Britain, Germany, and Japan of public policies that encourage or require employers to invest in training. The clearest and most widely cited example of employer involvement in preparing young people for the workplace is found in Germany, with its "dual system" in which young people train as apprentices on the job under the tutelage of experienced masters while also pursing classroom instruction for 1 or 2 days per week. The German apprenticeship system builds on a centuries-old tradition.

The national government took steps in to strengthen the system, in reaction to a declining interest in vocational training among young people and to union concerns that apprentices were being exploited. The reforms were successful in revitalizing this work-based approach to training. By the late s 60 percent of the German work force had completed an apprenticeship U. Office of Technology Assessment, About one-quarter of all firms sponsors apprentices U.

General Accounting Office, b A law requires all businesses to pay a tax of up to 0. The tax has never been levied Kolberg and Smith, At age 15 or 16, upon completion of mandatory full-time schooling, most youths enter one of about apprenticeships in crafts and trades, industries, and business. Would-be apprentices have strong reasons to perform well in school because the best students are awarded the highest quality and highest status training slots Soskice, After serving as apprentices for 3 years and passing a written and practical national exam, apprentices become journeymen.

After 3 more years of taking courses and working on the job, a journeyman may take an exam to become a master. Only masters are allowed to open businesses. Employers pay the costs of training at the worksite, including the time of the masters doing the training; they also pay wages to the trainees, although wages are only about one-third of the adult unskilled wage rate Lynch, Further, smaller firms receive some assistance from both the federal and the state governments for training costs.

The apprenticeship training curricula, examinations, and certification procedures are developed nationally through industry-union-government collaboration. See below for discussion of approaches to standardization and quality. German apprenticeships have such a high reputation for quality that they are able to attract even very academically prepared young people.

Scotland’s “Middling” Productivity – An International Perspective - FAI

Each year, a significant fraction of youth completing the matriculation certificate Abitur , which would allow them to enroll in universities, choose instead to become apprentices although many will later pursue a university education. Despite the considerable success of apprenticeships as qualifying training, concern over the increased importance of theoretical knowledge is shifting the typical age of entry into apprenticeship upward, to 18 or In Germany, it is increasingly common for students to attend a year in a vocational or special preparatory school before becoming apprentices Casey, Japanese firms also are strongly involved in qualifying training, through quite different means than in Germany.

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In Japan, employers are very influential primarily by their hiring practices, coupled with a large commitment to on-the-job training for new employees. Japanese young people are required to attend school for 9 years; 94 percent continue on for another 3 years of secondary school U. Twenty-six percent of youths aged attend vocationally oriented high schools; the rest pursue academic courses Kochan and Osterman, Employers do not expect secondary schools to emphasize technical skills, and for this reason the Japanese educational system is often thought to be very little involved in occupational training.

In fact, though, the entire schooling process has a "vocational cast" Kochan and Osterman, because schools are closely linked to employers through unique labor recruitment practices Rosenbaum and Kariya, High school students not planning to continue their educations find jobs through their schools.

Employers typically form links with a few high schools; they offer jobs to those schools, and teachers nominate and rank students for those jobs. Employers interview nominees and make final selections. How a student performs in school is very important in determining whether he or she will be nominated for a desirable job. This approach to linking schools and firms is also found though to varying degrees in. Japanese sub-baccalaureate institutions: private 2-year colleges that are similar to American community colleges and that are largely vocational in nature; technical colleges that combine upper secondary and postsecondary education; and special training schools and miscellaneous schools, which provide a variety of vocational courses.

German apprenticeships and Japanese recruitment practices are well-established ways of linking firms to the process of preparing young people for work.

By contrast, Australia and Britain have undertaken major revisions in their training systems in recent years; both have sought to increase the involvement of employers in the training process. Australia's reforms began in the s in response to growing unemployment and underemployment among the nearly two-thirds of young people who left high school after grade 10, at age 15 or 16, rather than staying on to complete the narrowly academic 11th and 12th grades. Various changes associated with the inclusion of more general and work-related courses in grades 11 and 12 caused high school completion rates to nearly double in a decade, growing from 34 to 64 percent between and Australian Education Council, More recent reforms involve revisions to the Technical and Further Education TAFE system that dominates post-high school training for young Australians.

The system provides full- and part-time courses for high school graduates and those who leave high school before graduation in TAFE Colleges, which focus heavily on initial vocational courses leading to qualifications in a wide range of trade, paraprofessional, and professional occupations. TAFE is also largely responsible for providing most of the coursework required of apprentices and trainees. While ongoing reforms to TAFE include efforts to link firms more closely to the training system, Australian employers have a long history of involvement in training through a well-established apprenticeship system and through a newer, smaller Australian traineeship system established in the mids.

About a quarter of Australian young people are apprentices or trainees; for many years apprenticeships were the dominant form of further training for Australian males who did not complete high school. Firms pay apprentices an age-determined proportion of the relevant tradesperson's full-time earnings, but are compensated by the government for the value of apprentices' time spent in TAFE classes. The payment for trainees is similar, though less generous. Part of the training reform agenda involves strengthening TAFE institutions' ties to local industries. Individual institutions are working with local employers to develop training courses and articulation agreements that link.

Federal matching grants encourage TAFE institutions to obtain industry contributions for the purchase of equipment. Industry is also involved in negotiations concerning curriculum revisions, the upgrading of credentials, and the development of national, competency-based standards for initial and subsequent vocational training see below.

The federal government's ability to promote increasing industry involvement in training should be enhanced by recent changes in the governance structure of TAFE, which was historically funded and controlled by state and territorial governments.

Human Work Productivity: A Global Perspective

ANTA will be fully responsible for setting national goals, objectives, and priorities for vocational education and training and, beginning in , will receive all commonwealth funding for TAFE as well as at least some of the state funding. On the basis of principles determined by the Ministerial Council, ANTA will then remit funding to the state training agencies. Over the last decade, Britain, too, has actively sought greater employer participation in training its young people, the majority of whom still leave school at age Whereas Australia is trying to engage firms more actively in determining policies for its schools, Britain is attempting to shift more training to the workplace.

It created a coordinating mechanism, Training and Enterprise Councils TECs , that invited firms to participate more in setting policy. These efforts have enjoyed only limited success.

Reform efforts at the postcompulsory level are built on changes made in compulsory schooling which lasts until age The British government has encouraged business interest in compulsory schooling by recommending that employers constitute at least 50 percent of the local boards of governors that set policies for individual schools. In a review of five studies assessing the prevalence of mental disorders, Sanderson and Andrews found that depression and anxiety disorders were most commonly reported [ 11 ].

Individuals with mental disorders were found to have a greater risk of non-participation in the workforce, although this conclusion is limited by the fact that studies have been conducted in developed countries [ 11 ]. Furthermore, people with depression were found to have an increased likelihood of experiencing comorbid physical disabilities, which may in turn have a negative impact on workplace productivity [ 18 ].

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The NCS Replication study by Kessler et al assessed the association between mood disorders and impairment in the workforce more specifically [ 19 ]. In this study of 3, workers in the USA, 6. Work performance was assessed using the WHO Health and Work Performance Questionnaire, incorporating self-report regarding absenteeism and presenteeism [ 19 ]. Presenteeism refers to the situation in which an employee attends work but is unable to work at their full capacity as a result of their illness; the impact of this issue has become of increasing concern to employers. It has been postulated that presenteeism may be of particular relevance to people with CMDs, as they may be less likely to report mental illness as a reason for missing work [ 20 ].

Depressive disorders were found to have a significant effect on work performance.

The authors' projections led to an estimate of million workdays lost productivity per year associated with major depressive disorder across the USA labour workforce [ 19 ]. However the NCS did report that all affective and anxiety disorders were associated with significant cutback days, and this pattern was consistent with that reported for both affective disorders and generalised anxiety disorder in Australia, and anxiety disorders alone in Ontario [ 11 ].

In Germany, there was a significant increase of long-term sickness due to mental illness over a similar time frame [ 23 ]. The cohort was followed over 18 months, and at the last time point the depression group had significantly greater deficits in job performance than either the rheumatoid arthritis or the control group.

Furthermore, job performance remained static between the 6-month and month intervals, reinforcing the chronic nature of disability that can result from depression [ 24 ]. In a cohort study of 6, employees, selected at random from three major public corporations in the USA, Druss et al demonstrated similar findings regarding the impact of depression on work performance [ 20 ].

This study was more representative of the general population with Participants completed surveys regarding health and their satisfaction with health care between and [ 20 ]. Those who reported depressive symptoms were more likely to be female, were younger, less well educated and were more likely to have comorbid medical problems. This study highlights the association between CMDs and absenteeism. The odds of absenteeism due to health reasons were twice as high for employees with depressive symptoms [ 20 ]. More significantly, this study highlighted the impact of presenteeism. Druss et al found a significant association between depressive symptoms and reduced effectiveness at work.

In one year of the study the odds of decreased effectiveness at work in people with chronic depressive symptoms was seven times that of people without depressive symptoms [ 20 ]. Coworkers and supervisors may also be affected by the impaired performance of individuals with CMDs [ 25 ]. Coworkers may need to perform additional work to compensate, and hence there is a "spillover" effect on others in the workplace [ 25 ]. This is particularly the case where employees work as part of a team; a stressed group of workers will clearly not function as efficiently, which in turn leads to reduced productivity.

Furthermore, mental illness may lead to "spillover" effects on the individual's family members, who may themselves be employed or engaged in other social responsibilities [ 25 ]. It is important to acknowledge that the inter-relationship between emotional wellbeing and work productivity is complex.

People with CMDs may persist with work yet remain unproductive due to personal reasons, workplace culture and stigma [ 26 ].

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