Competenze senza incubi: i National Occupational Standards

No fear for competencies: the National Occupational Standards Since a generation the professional training system in England is based on the National Occupational Standards. The target of the National Occupational Standards systems is to render workers at all levels able to carry out their roles and independent in taking decisions within the limits of their responsibilities. For sure this system hasn’t solved all the problems of the United Kingdom. There are yet a lot of safety problems railway accidents, scandals in social security services and in the medical assistance program, non ethical habits in banks and insurance companies due in part to the market liberalization, the state agency privatization and the shareholders’ pressure to increase profit, an insistence that endangers the medium-long range service quality, especially compromising safety. On the bright side however the quality of public and private service has consistently increased, the competitive role of the United Kingdom on the global market has been left untouched despite the progresses of the new economies and the unemployment rate is one of the lowest in Europe. The most remarkable impact of the new english training system can be noticed in a more flexible approach both by the employer and its employees. The market the external context is constantly changing, and there is the need to promptly respond or better prevent changing the companies targets, the work processes and the behaviors, renewing the knowledge and the skills of all the human resources.

Trevor Boutall, Competenze senza incubi: i National Occupational Standards in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO " 103/2006, pp , DOI: