It’s not just about policies and services, but individuals, families and communities: An interview with ETF's Florian Kadletz

“When I joined the ETF eight years ago and asked colleagues what it actually does, it was hard for people to express in simple words,” smiles Florian Kadletz. With his background in educational science and international relations, the ETF’s Human Capital Development Expert fits into the ETF's multidisciplinary crowd.

“Most of my colleagues described it as a talented sparring partner, performing a daily balancing act between policy advice to national ministries, assistance to technical experts, responding to requests from the European Commission, supporting networking and peer learning between various stakeholders, and analysing the state of play of human capital development in countries and regions,” the Austrian explains.

Looking forward from the present – and in particular at the ETF's mandate to prepare its partner countries for a paradigm shift towards lifelong learning – Florian sees it as well-placed to make a strong contribution to countries’ reform agendas.

For him personally, “there is no better place to be if you're interested in supporting individuals, families and communities.” 

International background

Florian began his career in international development cooperation, supporting the integration of young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs) into rapid child education programs and VET. He spent three years in Brussels, supporting programmes and projects of the European Commission, such as the EU programming for the MENA region in cooperation with civil society organisations during the Arab Spring. He also worked at a university in Austria supporting the implementation of the Bologna Process: “I focused on supporting the shift towards competency-based curricula and learner-centric teaching approaches,” he says. But he wanted to return to working in the international sector, and a positive response from the ETF came at just the right time.

New realities

For the past eight years, he has been contributing to the balancing act. He started out working on entrepreneurial learning: supporting an entrepreneurial mindset among learners by focusing on transversal key competences and innovative, learner-centric teaching methods. But for the last two years, he has been able to concentrate on an underdeveloped field of activity for the ETF: career guidance.

“It is a field that has been brought into being by new realities,” he explains. “There is no longer any such thing as a job for life. People need to negotiate various transitions throughout their working lives, which calls for regular re-/upskilling and perhaps even changing professions. To do that successfully, they need professional support. Career guidance is the key enabler for lifelong learning systems.”

Promoting career guidance

The ETF has been promoting career guidance initiatives in various ways. It has mobilised for an inter-agency working group on the subject to be created; today the group brings together the ILO, OECD, World Bank, the European Commission, CEDEFOP, UNESCO and UNICEF, giving it true global reach. Global Careers Month events organised every five years provide the initiative with increased visibility. In parallel, the ETF is presenting arguments for increased investment in career guidance. One example would be its recent report into Developing national career development support systems: produced in partnership with the ILO, it employs a holistic approach to analyse what high-quality career guidance systems need to look like. Or the joint ETF-UNICEF study on young people's needs with regard to career guidance, to inform policy responses.

Grassroots programmes

Crucially, the ETF has also been working with its partner countries on the ground, to redefine the nature of career guidance in the modern world. North Macedonia, for example, has launched a programme to develop new career guidance standards.

“But what does that mean?” asks Florian. “It can’t be the same career guidance as in the 1980s. Today it’s about learning career management skills, with social and emotional skills at their core.”

Those skills include knowing oneself, building a positive identity, and learning to learn skills; developing a critical understanding of the labour market; creating an awareness of the world of learning and education, and how it can help learners to achieve their life goals; and finally, more practical elements like CV writing and interview skills.

Other initiatives have focused on the low levels of adult engagement with learning systems in the ETF’s partner countries. A successful partnership with Germany’s DVV International has explored specific learning pathways that combine both life skills and career learning.

“We bring people together, create a positive atmosphere, and encourage them to talk about their community,” Florian explains. “Then we talk about how their skills could make that community a better place. It’s a dialogue-based approach. One participant was an illiterate 60-year-old woman from a very conservative and underprivileged area of Jordan. Today she’s self-employed and hiring other people to work for her.”

Paradigm shift

Florian believes that initiatives like this will assume increasing importance in the years to come.

“The future is all about how we support continuous lifelong learning in support of individuals, their families and communities,” he says. “It’s not just about technical skills. It’s about career management and life skills too. We need to help our partner countries get policies in place to meet the needs of diverse population groups, and the focus must be on the demand side, rather than supply. So the needs of individuals, their families and communities become the focus: the policies and services are just there to serve them.” 

The transition to lifelong learning marks a paradigm shift for all concerned, including the ETF itself. As countries design new policy environments to adapt their workforces to a changing world, there is a growing need for concrete advice rooted in grassroots experience. By focusing on the specific realities of today’s learners, the ETF is well-placed to meet it.

“Lifelonglearning systems have career guidance at their heart," says Florian, "both as a preventive measure in education and to empower individuals, families and groups throughout their lives. But this requires building systematic lifelong guidance systems, and understanding that guidance is not a cost, but an investment.”