Future Work & Skills Lab

In the "Future Work & Skills Lab", in an interdisciplinary team, we want to research and improve our understanding of the future world of work and the skills required for it. We place a special focus on the question of how automation and Artificial Intelligence are changing the working landscape as well as occupational profiles and what new skills and training might be required to cope with these changes. Thereby, we put a strong focus on the development of strategies, labour market policies and training programmes that help to benefit from the advantages of AI while reducing its potential negative impacts.

Leading House GOVPET – Governance in Vocational and Professional Education and Training

Integrated into the Future Work & Skills Lab is the Leading House GOVPET, a competence centre funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).

Under the lead of IBB Director Professor Patrick Emmenegger and in cooperation with the University of Lausanne, the Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (SFIVET) Zollikofen and the University of Cologne, the GOVPET Leading House began its activities in July 2015. The Leading House focuses on the comparative analysis of governance structures in the area of dual VET.

The research program of the GOVPET Leading House focuses on collective training systems in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland. In the first research phase, from 2015-2020, the Leading House analysed how stable forms of decentralised cooperation can be achieved despite the constant danger of a cooperation breakdown and how private actors can be motivated to cooperate in the long term. These questions also play an important role in the second research phase, which began in summer 2020. In addition, GOVPET is now investigating the influence of two central socio-economic trends on the governance of education systems, namely technological change and migration.