Swiss aim to train welfare recipients to help fill staff shortages

The more qualifications you have, the better your chances of getting back to work long-term, say further education proponents. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally

Amid a growing labour shortage, Swiss social services want to promote people’s reintegration into the job market through further education.

Staff shortages hit record levels in Switzerland in 2022, when for the first time the number of open job offers topped 100,000. At 2.2%, the unemployment rate is at its lowest in 20 years. As a result, firms in both the manufacturing and services sectors are having serious problems recruiting.

The situation doesn’t look set to improve in the coming years. Over the next decade, the country could face a shortage of some half a million workers, warns the Swiss employers’ association, an umbrella group representing businesses.

To deal with the lack of manpower, economic actors want to focus on maximising the potential of the resident workforce. The employers’ association, for example, points to several population groups with potential: young people, women (especially mothers), older people, people with health issues, provisionally admitted foreignersExternal link, and beneficiaries of social assistance.

Training drive

The Swiss Conference for Social Assistance (SKOS) and the Swiss Federation for Adult Learning (SVEB) want every person on social assistance to be able to attend a further education course. Having launched a campaign focussed on this issue in 2018, the two institutions now want to step up their efforts.

Previously, the welfare system focussed on simply reintegrating people into the job market rather than training them, say SKOS and SVEB. “But experience shows that boosting skills helps not just to re-enter the job market, but to then stay there longer,” says SVEB president and Social Democrat parliamentarian Matthias Aebischer. “It’s a paradigm shift in the [social assistance] field.”

The further education drive also aims to improve cooperation between social services and the economy, notably by lowering the job requirements in certain sectors for welfare recipients.

Vulnerable groups

In Switzerland, social assistance is an option of last resort for people unable to provide for themselves or their families. It covers the legal minimum needs for subsistence, with the costs covered by cantons and municipalities.

Some 3.1% of the population, or 265,000 people, received social assistance in 2021. The rate has varied only slightly over the past two decades, even during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Children and youths depend more on social assistance than any other age group. But other groups are vulnerable too. Along with non-Swiss citizens and divorcees, people without a secondary qualification are particularly at risk. Around 182,000 working-age people (18-64-years old) received social assistance in 2021; among them, almost half had no professional qualification, while a third had problems with basic skills.

Vouchers and coaching

Up to now, the further education campaign has helped nine social service institutions to develop structures in order to encourage beneficiaries to take training courses.

In the German-speaking part of the country, vouchers of CHF500 ($548) were given to welfare recipients in canton Lucerne to help them sign up for basic skills training courses. Social workers helped those involved to choose a relevant course and then to enrol.

In the southern canton of Ticino, new “learning cafés” are planned: these are informal learning spaces that help participants to develop basic skills, notably in the areas of digital media literacy, self-organisation, and taking initiative.

And in the French-speaking part of the country, canton Vaud has been a pioneer since 2006, when it introduced a programme to encourage younger welfare beneficiaries to enrol in courses: participants receive a grant as well as personalised coaching for the duration of the course, with the aim of lowering drop-out levels. The programme has already helped some 2,600 people gain a qualification, and seen a 70% success rate.

The goal of SKOS and SVEB now is to extend this type of programme to the whole of the country by 2026, by which point it’s hoped some 40 social service institutions will have developed the necessary structures.

Adapted from French by Domhnall O’Sullivan