중소기업 직업능력개발 유인체계 구축

Abstract

중소기업은 우리나라 경제에서 차지하는 중요성에도 불구하고 경영성과 및 질적 경쟁력 측면에서 대기업에 비하여 미흡한 것으로 지적되고 있다. 이러한 사실에 주목하여 정부는 중소기업의 생산성 향상과 경쟁력 강화를 위하여 다양한 직업능력개발 사업을 통해 중소기업을 지원하고 있으며, 중소기업에 특화된 사업들을 지속적으로 발굴하여 확대해 나가고 있다. 그럼에도 불구하고 여전히 대기업에 비하여 중소기업의 직업능력개발 참여는 저조한 실정이다. 이 연구에서는 중소기업의 직업능력개발에 대한 실태 파악과 함께 정부지원 중소기업 직업능력개발 사업의 문제점을 분석하고 개선점을 모색함으로써, 중소기업의 직업능력개발 참여를 유도하며 자율적 직업능력개발이 어려운 중소기업의 능력개발 참여를 견인할 수 있는 지원 시스템 구축과 실행 방안을 제안하였다. ○ 주요내용 - 중소기업 직업능력개발의 개요 - 중소기업 직업능력개발 사업 및 문헌 분석 - 중소기업 직업능력개발 실태 및 요구조사 결과 - 해외의 중소기업 직업능력개발 지원 제도 - 중소기업 직업능력개발 유인체계 구축 방안

Korean Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) play a pivotal role in the national economy, accounting for 99.9% of all enterprises (3 million SMEs), 87.5% of the total employment (10.8 million employees), and 49.4% of production (SMBA, 2010). While the economic status of SMEs is considerably important in Korea, SMEs face difficulties in terms of productivity and competitiveness. It has been recognized that these difficulties mainly arise from the lack of skills formation. Subsequently, in order to help SMEs develop human resources, the Korean government has adopted various skills development policies to encourage them to train their workers. In particular, the Korean government has used policy strategies focused on employees in SMEs, which do not have an inferior training infrastructure relative to large companies. However, the participation rate of SMEs is still much lower than that of large enterprises, even though policy outcomes for SMEs are identified in terms of increasing the number of places, budget, and number of participating employees. Thus, task of increasing SME participation in skills development for their employees still remains. There are numerous possible reasons why SMEs do not actively implement education and training for their employees: the concern of production failure due to the leave of absence for education and training, lack of time and budget, lack of information on programs and methods of education and training, contents and methods of training programs that are irrelevant to the SMEs'' situation, ignorance of the management, lack of perception on the need for skills development due to simple and routine work, and concern of poaching. However, the fundamental difference between SMEs and large companies is in the characteristics of work and the means of skills development. That is, while large companies have rather specific job duties, SMEs do not tend to have clearly defined job roles and one employee is thus likely to take responsible for several jobs in a small-sized company. In doing so, SMEs face difficulties of vacancy derived from the lack of employees in case one of them need to attend education and training programs. Furthermore, in terms of the means of skills development, formal learning such as classroom-based training is frequently used in large companies, whereas formal as well as informal learning are utilized in SMEs. Informal learning focuses on the interaction between people and the relationships with others on the job. Essentially, it has been recognized that informal learning in SMEs plays a critical role in delivering specific job skills and information from seniors to juniors as well as in maintaining the sustainable survival of organizations. In addition, SMEs face the challenge of not knowing how to develop employees’ job competence because they do not have suitable infrastructure to support employees’ skills development. In contrast, large companies have the infrastructure required for the same. ...