RECOGNITION OF NON-FORMAL AND INFORMAL ... - Solidar

PART III
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The APL-procedure itself leads to a refl ection of strengths,
weaknesses, talents and goals for the candidate. Therefore,
competences not only include professional competences
but social and personal competences as well, which
can result in a career switch or a better understanding of
the career path a candidate needs to follow.
However, as this was a limited project we were unable to scan
a complete workforce for their potential in personnel development.
It was feasible, though, to safeguard the informal competences
of small groups with a known professional aim and to
make an individual’s strengths visible.
The project partners operated on the scientifi c assumption that
describing vocational competences is not so much about what
an individual has learnt at school, university, university of applied
sciences or during vocational training, i. e. during formal education,
but about which competences an individual has acquired
informally in his or her work life, social commitments, private life
and even when starting a family. What is more, the skills that
need substantiating in the form of non-formal learning in courses
and training programmes could either not be certifi ed as there
was no evidence of their acquisition in the cases concerned, or
they had been acquired through self-study or learning-by-doing.
Most competence areas had to be analysed individually as it was
not possible to apply a standardised procedure here.
the subset of fulltime works council members for the pilot project
(in Germany, those are about 100,000 individuals) which
we assumed to be of interest for people active in politics and
high-level union offi cials in European companies. Due to our
experiences as the DGB Bildungswerk BUND we were able to
get up close to the work of works council members and the
necessary and acquired competences as well as their assumed
career aspirations / fi elds of work and the possibilities and experiences
available. Both areas area largely comparable so the
specifi c competences can be recorded.
Another important reason was the fact that – derived from the
competences and qualifi cation requirements in the predefi ned
areas of human resources management (HRM), health and safety
management, public relations and education – it seemed feasible
to compare the necessary and partly known competence
requirements for a professional career change with the competences
identifi ed in the pilot project within a year.
Moreover, recording and demonstrating competences acquired
externally as well as in the private domain (civil commitments,
voluntary or political activities) is extremely diffi cult. This is why
we concentrated on known competence areas, especially in union
and special interest groups within companies.
POSSIBLE PROFILES OF
REQUIREMENTS FOR RETIRED
WORKERS’ REPRESENTATIVES
¬ In order to derive a manageable subset, the project had to
concentrate on identifying the informal competences (or practical
knowledge) of a small group of people. Therefore, we chose
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