The Future of Work Podcast

Good afternoon and welcome to our lunchtime  conversations from the International Labour  

Conference here at the Palais des Nations  in Geneva. These conversations are brought  

to you by the ILO's Future of Work  podcast series. I am Ibon Villelabeitia. 

Across the world, labour markets are undergoing  major transformations driven by digitalization,  

the green transition and demographic changes.  

These shifts are reshaping not only the types  of jobs available, but also the skills workers  

need throughout their working lives. A new ILO report highlights that lifelong  

learning is becoming increasingly important  for jobs, for better jobs, innovation and more  

inclusive societies. However, access to quality  learning opportunities remains deeply unequal. 

Today we'll discuss how workers and  employers are adapting to a changing  

world of work and what it takes to make  lifelong learning a reality for everyone. 

To help us unpack these issues, we have a  panel bringing together research, policy,  

workers' and employers' perspectives  from different parts of the world. 

We have Hannah Liepmann, who  is an economist in the Research  

Department of the ILO. Thank you, Hannah. We have Pedro Moreno da Fonseca, who is also  

at the ILO, a lifelong learning specialist. We also have Chaudhry Saad Muhammad,  

who is the General Secretary of the  Pakistan United Workers Federation. 

And last but not least, we have Josephine  Andriamamonjiarison from the Employers'  

Association of Madagascar. She is the Honorary  President of the Employers' Association of  

Madagascar. Hannah, let me start with you. We all feel that  

labour markets are changing rapidly. What does the  evidence tell us about who has access to learning  

opportunities today and who is being left behind? Yeah, exactly. Thank you for this question. 

As you said, labour markets are changing  rapidly and skills are an important factor  

in this process because skills determine who can  benefit from these changes and who risks falling  

behind. That means that lifelong learning  also becomes increasingly important  

as a means to make sure that labour market  inequalities do not increase even further. 

Against this background, in our new ILO report  on lifelong learning and skills for the future,  

we mapped the state of lifelong learning  globally. And what we find in general terms,  

as you already referred to, Ibon, is that  access to quality learning is out of reach  

for many adults and it is also highly unequal. One figure that we continue to cite in this regard  

is that globally only 16 per cent of workers have  access to structured learning over the course of  

a year. Interestingly, this does not change much  between countries of different income levels and  

it's also quite similar across different regions. Alongside the report, we published a regional  

analysis that you can find on our web portal  if you are interested, but just to make the  

case here now that access to learning is  low for workers across different regions. 

Now, we wanted to go an important step further and  understand in much greater detail how people are  

learning because this clearly goes beyond formal  education alone. And when we did this analysis,  

we found that there were important gaps in  knowledge and evidence. This was especially  

true when it comes to learning in the  world of work. It was also especially  

true outside of high-income countries. Because of this, we designed a new survey  

tool that we piloted in selected middle-income  countries and that is available to the public. 

This analysis really revealed that especially  for informal workers, they learn mostly by  

doing. They don't have additional support or  learning opportunities. And the same is true  

for illiterate workers, for workers  with low levels of formal education  

and also for workers in small enterprises. Related to this, we also discuss important  

gender gaps, particularly when it comes  to access to quality apprenticeships. 

So just to conclude, there's still a very long way  to go and I look forward to this panel discussion  

because I think we'll hear about possible policy  solutions and also how they work in practice. 

Thank you, Hannah. I think that gives us a  clear picture of the scale of the challenges.  

Now let's move on to policy solutions. Pedro, if I may move on to you. We hear a  

lot about the need for lifelong learning.  But what do we know about what actually  

works? What are the key ingredients of  effective lifelong learning systems? 

Thank you so much for this question. First of all, I'd like to say there's no  

ideal solution, right? There's not one single  solution that works for every country. All  

countries have different histories, different  systems and different cultures. So there's not  

an ideal recipe for a lifelong learning system. This being said, we did look into what works,  

both at programme level and at policy  level. So I'll mention a bit of both. 

In terms of what works at programme level,  we ran an analysis of 167 impact evaluation  

studies for programmes in education, training  and other learning modalities. Essentially,  

a very important truth is that all learning  programmes have positive effects. It doesn't  

matter which type. They all have positive effects  on wages and on the employability of individuals. 

But what we also uncovered is that programmes  that combine classroom and on-the-job learning  

tend to have much stronger effects. This is the  case, for example, with quality apprenticeships,  

which the ILO is strongly promoting at the  moment, or combining classroom learning with  

good internships. Another thing,  

which is not necessarily surprising, is that if  these trainings lead to formal qualifications,  

to a recognised certificate, they  tend to have even stronger effects.  

This also advises caution in terms of the  too-quick adoption of very light certificates  

that are not necessarily quality assured. Turning quickly to what works in policy,  

we did uncover a few aspects, or put evidence  behind certain beliefs that we already had. 

One is that clearly, when you have good  tripartite governance at national and  

sectoral level, you tend to have better  investment and better management of  

learning programmes. So you need strong support  through social dialogue, and I'm glad we have the  

social partners with us here today as well. You need good institutional capacity to put  

all these pieces that constitute lifelong  learning together in a coherent system.  

Also sustained financing, which is a big  issue, to really build up these systems. 

Despite many efforts that we have seen policy-wise  in many countries, what we verify is that there is  

still a lot of fragmentation in these systems.  So there's really a lot of work to be done. 

Very quickly, I would also underline  the importance of really raising the  

bar in terms of access. It's not only about  creating the solutions, it's about enabling  

people to get into these learning solutions  through financial support, career guidance,  

pathways through recognition of past experience  and knowledge, and really getting the people who  

need it into the right solutions. Thank you, Pedro. 

Let's move from research and policy to what you  were saying about social partners and countries. 

Saad, if I might ask you now, from what you are  seeing in Pakistan, how are workers experiencing  

these changes in skills needs and labour markets?  And in a context where so many workers are in  

informal employment, are they able to access the  training and learning opportunities they need? 

Thank you so much for having me here  with such esteemed co-panellists. 

From the Pakistan context, I see that it is  very clear that workers are finding these  

changes very difficult, especially  because digitalization, automation,  

climate change and increasing uncertainty in the  labour market are all hitting workers very hard. 

Most of those who are facing this transition  are facing it without adequate preparation.  

Why? Because in Pakistan we don't have a  proper mechanism for skills development.  

Lifelong learning is still beyond something that  we can really think about while there are very few  

opportunities, or even no opportunities, for  informal sector workers to learn new skills. 

I see that even in the formal sector, workers have  very few opportunities to improve their skills at  

the workplace. We do have formal institutions,  but we have to understand that in a developing  

country like Pakistan, where workers are  struggling to earn their bread and butter,  

how can they leave their jobs for training?  They don't get paid leave for training. How  

can they go to formal institutions to receive  training and bear the resulting wage loss?  

They are simply not in a position to do so. So I think we need to consider how we can bring  

lifelong learning and skills training from  formal TVET institutions to workplaces,  

and not just to workplaces but also to  communities and informal settings where  

people can easily access these opportunities  in their free time and improve their skills. 

Not just that, we also have to see how we can  ensure that workers in the formal sector are  

given such opportunities by their employers,  with paid leave and other forms of support.

So that is very important because time is  changing, and digitalization – what we see  

today – after five years it will be maybe 500 or  1,000 per cent more advanced than it is today. 

So I see that workers are not in a position, not  ready for that maybe, and even if they're ready,  

there's no opportunity for them to learn  those skills so that they can match  

their skills with the market and get jobs. If this inequality remains, I fear that many  

workers will lose their jobs because they will not  have relevant skills, and employers will be hiring  

people from outside and firing existing workers. So, from the workers' perspective and from  

Pakistan, I think that we need to make sure that  in the TVET system that exists in the country,  

if I talk specifically about Pakistan, these  institutions are not tripartite. They should  

be. We should ensure tripartism in these TVET  institutions so that they sit together, decide,  

and come up with the courses and training  that are needed currently and in the future. 

Currently, I assure you that many of the  training programmes offered in Pakistan's  

technical education institutions are those that  were needed in the 1990s, or maybe in 2002,  

2003, 2004, 2005, or perhaps up to 2010. For  example, they are doing routine training in  

electrician work, welding and similar trades.  That time has gone. You have to come up with  

digital tools, AI – everything is there. One thing we also need to think about  

is starting from school. We have to  start teaching these skills to our  

children from a very early age and we also have to  emphasize the importance of technical education. 

This will be my last comment on this. I won't  take much time because I know time is constrained. 

In Pakistan, technical education or skills  training is sometimes seen as something for people  

who are not good at studies, for someone who is  not brilliant, which is totally a misconception.  

Parents put pressure on their children to become  doctors, engineers, scientists or PhD scholars. 

But what we have learned is that many  machine operators in factories earn more  

than a general manager because they know how  to carefully handle the machinery. So it means  

that skills are what is most important and what  can earn you more money if you are good at them. 

For Pakistan, I think there is a need to  revamp our education system in a way that  

promotes skills education because we cannot  have 1,000 engineers and 1,000 doctors if  

there are no such jobs in the market. On the  other hand, we may need 10 machinists and 10  

web application developers and not have them. So I think there is a need to rethink and revamp  

all these things. Thank you. 

Thank you, Saad, for that very  interesting insight from your country. 

Now let me bring in the employers' perspective. Josephine, how are skills needs changing and  

what helps enterprises invest more effectively  in skills development and lifelong learning? 

Thank you for this question. In Madagascar, employers are experiencing  

significant changes in skills requirements  driven by digitalization, technological  

innovation, the growing economy, the blue economy,  globalization and new enterprise business models. 

There is growing demand, for example, for  digital skills, including the use of AI,  

data management and information  technology. At the same time, employers  

increasingly value skills such as adaptability,  problem-solving, communication and teamwork. 

Many enterprises are making efforts to respond to  these changing needs. Our employers' organization  

has established a training fund dedicated  to financing vocational and professional  

skills development. We also work closely with  international organizations and partners to  

provide training opportunities to our employees. Through this initiative, many companies have  

benefited from capacity-building  programmes offered by the ILO,  

especially in the field of AI. The International  Training Centre in Turin has also played an  

important role in upgrading workforce skills. However, many enterprises face challenges  

in responding to these evolving needs.  Skills mismatches remain a major concern,  

as training and education systems do not  always align with labour market requirements. 

In addition, limited access to quality  training programmes, especially for SMEs  

and businesses operating outside major urban  centres, can hinder workforce development. 

The situation is, of course, even more challenging  for enterprises operating in the informal sector,  

which account for around 90 per cent  of all businesses in Madagascar. 

This is really a huge sector. To help enterprises invest more effectively  

in lifelong learning, strong public-private  partnerships are essential. Governments can  

support training through dedicated funding  mechanisms, incentives for employers and  

policies that encourage continuous learning. Closer collaboration between employers,  

training institutions and international  organizations is also needed to ensure  

that training programmes remain relevant  to labour market needs and accessible  

to all workers throughout their careers. At the same time, the current international  

context, including geopolitical tensions, rising  energy costs and changes in international trade  

arrangements, has increased pressure on  businesses. These challenges often force  

companies to prioritize immediate operational  survival over long-term investment in training. 

This is why sustained support and collaborative  partnerships are more important than ever to  

ensure that lifelong learning remains a  reality for enterprises and workers alike. 

Thank you, Josephine. We've talked about changing  

skills needs and unequal access to learning,  challenges facing both workers and, as we've  

just heard from Josephine, employers. So let's turn now to solutions. 

How can countries ensure that lifelong learning  opportunities are available throughout working  

life and that they reach those who need them most? I'm going to ask you, Saad,  

first to address this question. Thank you so much. It's a very important question. 

From the workers' side, as I said before,  if we really want lifelong learning to  

reach workers, we first have to make sure  that it is accessible to ordinary workers. 

To ensure that accessibility, we have to make  sure that everything we are talking about,  

and everything governments design, reaches  people in practice and not just in policies. 

For example, in a country like Pakistan,  especially in the informal economy,  

platform workers, women with care  responsibilities, domestic workers,  

young workers and migrant workers cannot  afford to leave their jobs for training. 

So first of all, we need to ensure that this  training is free of charge, and I think employers  

and governments should both contribute to it. Employers have large CSR budgets. They can  

spend part of those CSR budgets on  employee training. If they don't want  

to spend from another budget line, they can  use those resources. So the money is there. 

We also need to be very serious about awareness.  Many workers do not understand how important it is  

to improve their skills. They think that  what they learn through experience is enough. 

Experience does matter, but  now skills matter as well. 

So we need to make workers understand this. As a worker representative, I want to give  

this message to my employer counterparts,  other colleagues and everyone listening:  

we as workers are ready to learn every day, but  the system must come to us, not expect workers  

to come to the system. Thank you. 

Hannah, do you want to respond? Yes, I would like to respond to that  

and maybe also to the experience from Madagascar. I think we now have a very solid evidence base,  

and our work at the ILO has contributed  to that as well, showing that it will not  

be enough simply to offer training to workers. As you said, many workers, especially the most  

vulnerable ones, will simply not be able to afford  to take time off work to improve their skills. 

That really means that income support becomes  important. This can be in the form of social  

security benefits or cash transfers. The two types of support complement  

each other very nicely because income support  allows workers to participate in training, while  

training allows them to acquire new skills and  ideally have better opportunities in the future. 

As a more general observation, I think we are  not looking for a model of lifelong learning that  

places the entire responsibility on workers,  where the idea is that workers need to stay  

competitive and adapt to changing labour markets. Instead, it needs to be a realization – and I  

assume we agree on this – that  lifelong learning also benefits  

enterprises, helping them remain innovative, and  it also helps achieve broader societal goals. 

This means that it needs to be perceived as  a shared responsibility. That also entails  

sustainable financial solutions, which likewise  need to be understood as a shared responsibility. 

And we already have one example that  Pedro alluded to: quality apprenticeships,  

where these ideas are implemented in practice. Thank you, Hannah. 

Josephine, you were nodding when Hannah  said it's a shared responsibility. Do you  

want to take it up from there? I think that countries can make lifelong  

learning more accessible and inclusive by adopting  a shared-responsibility approach involving  

governments, workers, employers' organizations,  training institutions and international partners. 

First, learning opportunities must be available  throughout a person's working life and  

adapted to changing labour market needs. This requires flexible training models,  

including online learning, workplace training,  microcredentials and short courses that allow  

workers to learn while remaining employed. This is a major challenge because employers  

do not always want their employees to go  for training because they need them at work. 

Second, targeted support should be provided to  those who need it most, including workers in SMEs,  

women, youth, workers in rural areas and  those employed in the informal sector. 

As I said, the informal sector accounts for  90 per cent of enterprises in Madagascar. 

Third, sustainable financing mechanisms  are essential. Training funds,  

public-private partnerships and support  from international organizations can  

help reduce the financial barriers that prevent  enterprises and workers from investing in skills  

development, especially in the informal sector. In Madagascar, when we established our fund,  

our members did not want the fund to finance  the informal sector. So we had to find  

funding from partners to finance that sector. So this is very important. It has to be a  

collaboration between the government,  employers and international partners. 

Thank you. Pedro, do you want to add? 

Yeah, everything has been said, right?  But okay, I'll try to add something. 

I mean, a more generic comment that  possibly puts these things together. 

I think we all know there's a massive investment  gap when it comes to learning solutions. The key  

thing is to think in the medium and long term and  not oversimplify how this investment must be made. 

It's not only about formal education and training.  It's really about diversifying learning solutions  

and pathways to qualifications, and I think  that's what all the panellists have been saying.

So it's really not only about having the  funds but putting them in the right places,  

in diverse solutions that cover  the full needs of the population,  

especially in this time of structural transition. I think all these solutions have already been  

mentioned, so I'm not going to repeat them. It is important to pay attention to the  

fact that regulatory systems and programmes  really allow for multiple entry points and  

make access very easy and smooth for people. I think the informal sector is indeed a very  

important aspect, and we haven't talked much  about upgrading traditional apprenticeships,  

for example. Traditional learning still  constitutes the majority of learning in  

many countries and is often the main pathway to  work and jobs. A lot can be done at that level,  

so programmes can be scaled up, and that's  something I would also like to underline. 

In terms of financing, I know this  has been mentioned many times,  

but I will still mention it from the perspective  that, in the end, countries need to select an  

architecture for financing lifelong learning. Again, there is no ideal way to do this.  

There is an appropriate way depending on the  challenges and opportunities a country has. 

You can make use of what already exists in terms  of core financing, but then you can have a lot  

of creative solutions that target productivity  in enterprises, support small and medium-sized  

enterprises, reach people in rural areas and  support people in sectors that are strategic  

for the country's economic growth and development. One last point is to invest in a more structured  

way in career guidance and recognition of  prior learning, meaning the validation of  

competencies, as well as outreach. The reality of lifelong learning  

is really about enabling flexible pathways to  qualifications and decent work. Training in itself  

is not sufficient. You need all the additional  elements that get people on the right track  

and onto a path that truly empowers them. Thank you very much. 

And now, to wrap up our programme, I'm  going to ask each of you to look ahead. 

Pedro said earlier that there are no ideal  recipes and, at the risk of oversimplification,  

can I ask each of you, so that our  audience can take this message home:  

what is the one thing that would make the  biggest difference for lifelong learning systems? 

If there is a single point I  would like to stress today,  

the priority would be to strengthen  cooperation between employers, governments,  

international institutions, education and  training institutions, and of course workers. 

Effective lifelong learning systems require  all stakeholders to work together to ensure  

that training programmes are affordable, relevant,  accessible and aligned with labour market needs. 

Strong partnerships can help close skills gaps,  expand access to quality learning opportunities  

and ensure that workers and enterprises  are better prepared for the future of work. 

Thank you. Strong cooperation, strong partnerships. 

Who wants to go next? Well, exactly the same thing. 

It's really, in the way that has been formulated  before, a shared responsibility, right? 

Lifelong learning is not the sole responsibility  of the individual who is learning. There  

needs to be a change in perspective. To build an enabling environment, you need  

to make it a shared responsibility because you  need to set an agreed vision for the development  

of the system. You need to pool resources from  several stakeholders. You need to agree on the  

targets to reach and when to reach them. And you need to regularly review the  

options and agree on how to adjust  the course you are following. 

So we come back to the point of strong  governance, tripartism and social dialogue. 

For me, that's also the key aspect. Thank you. 

Okay. So I couldn't agree more. In order not to repeat what has been said, let  

me take a step back and make a broader comment. We've now heard about these really important  

building blocks for successful  lifelong learning systems. 

Lifelong learning is extremely  important, but it should be  

one piece of a much broader policy agenda. What we will also need is investment in quality  

jobs, particularly in future growth sectors  such as the care economy and green employment. 

We need social protection. We need it in general,  but especially for people losing their jobs and  

people who are transitioning in labour markets. And finally, this is something we have not  

touched upon very much during our panel  today, but we discuss it in our report on  

lifelong learning and skills for the future. We also need to ensure that markets and  

societies adequately value the skills of all  workers, and this is particularly important in  

sectors that create social value. Thank you. 

Finally, Saad. Thank you. 

I have always been a big talker, so  I thought coming last would be good. 

From the workers' perspective, and without  trying to be too technical, I would say that  

the barrier is not the willingness of workers  to learn. The barrier is time and opportunity. 

If we really want lifelong learning  to be real, then it must be built  

into working life rather than outside it. The current reality is that learning often  

has to happen in your spare time. 

So this shift – from learning in your  spare time to learning as part of your  

job – can make lifelong learning something  sustainable and meaningful for workers. 

That is what I would say. Thank you. 

Thank you very much to our  four panellists for this very  

interesting conversation and for your insights. I think today's conversation has made it clear  

that lifelong learning is no longer  an option. Making it accessible to all  

workers and enterprises will require coordinated  policies, investment and strong social dialogue,  

and from what we've heard again  and again, shared responsibility. 

Thank you for joining us at the  International Labour Conference in Geneva. 

For those interested in learning more  about the issues discussed today,  

I encourage the audience and those of you  who are here to visit the ILO's Lifelong  

Learning and Skills for the Future portal, which  brings together reports, data visualizations,  

regional briefs, videos and other resources on  lifelong learning and the changing world of work. 

Be sure to tune in again as we  continue to explore the major  

transformations shaping the world of work today. You can follow us online at @ilo on X, TikTok  

and Bluesky; @ilo.org on Facebook, Instagram,  Threads and Bluesky, and as the International  

Labour Organization on LinkedIn. Thank you for listening, and we look forward  

to welcoming you again soon. Goodbye.