| WYG International has implemented these significant contracts to manage the provision of modular vocational and non-vocational training courses for 7,000 people threatened by unemployment in the Silesian voivdeship. In INITIATIVE I the project recognised that many of the skills acquired by people now threatened by unemployment were transferable and instead of complete, fundamental retraining, a modular approach giving certain key skills could provide employers with the resources they require at a reduced cost. The eligible group could take advantage of a variety of vocational and non-vocational training courses including outplacement advice, enterprise based (on-the-job) training and a menu of over 100 different training courses. Following the success of the IMC project to retrain redundant workers in INITIATIVE 1IMC were successful in winning (in competitive tender) the follow up project under INITIATIVE 2.
Following promotion of the project and the recruitment of participants, a comprehensive database was developed to record details of applicants, training places and financial information, as well as training outcomes. Applicants were assisted to select appropriate courses from a menu of over 100 different fields. If a trainee requests training in a course not represented in our menu, and this is relevant to labour market and employers’ needs, the IMC team make this provision available.
Almost 5,000 people completed the modular training programmes in a variety of combinations providing the labour market with almost 100 different skills to 5 different levels. Of those gaining new employment, 62% received salaries within 10% of their former salary. Over 12 months, 155 training courses were held in 70 different subjects. All trainees were provided with additional training in job search and interview technique. The monitoring and evaluation of the longer term outcomes of training scheme was carried out through follow-up survey by telephone, questionnaires and personal interviews.
In the first year of the project 1,868 redundant workers were provided with modular vocational training and 51% of these were in new full time employment after 3 months. This rose to 70% after 6 months. Similar to the previous project but over two and half times larger in scale, at one stage the project was training 890 workers in 44 different courses.
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