The OLR Regional Labor Observatory will study how the lack of water resources influences the labor market.
Seven years ago, the Labor Observatory came into operation in the Coquimbo Region, an entity that is part of the Network of Labor Observatories, dependent on the Undersecretariat of Labor, and which since its inception in the region has been executed by the Universidad Católica del Norte, initially by the Institute of Public Policies (IPP) and the School of Business Sciences (ECIEM) and since this year by ECIEM.
It has been years of contributions from the academy to achieve the mission of the observatory, to produce knowledge about the existing gaps between supply and demand of occupations in the labor market, and to move towards anticipating future gaps. The main objective being to improve the employability of workers; promote the productivity of companies and regional development, providing relevant information for public and private decision-making.
As the years go by, the challenges continue to increase. Karen Vargas Santander, the new Regional Director of the Labor Observatory, spoke to us about these challenges. She is an academic at the School of Business Sciences and Director of the Master’s in Business Administration at UCN.
The new director has taken on a challenging role, because the Labor Observatory allows for the generation of information to be used in the development of public policies on regional labor matters, a space in which the School of Business Sciences can contribute.
What are the main challenges when assuming the regional direction of the Labor Observatory?
The Labor Observatory is challenging, there are many facets, there is the labor situation, the deepening that we want to do of the occupations that are most in demand in the Coquimbo Region, the application of the National Labor Demand Survey, the socio-labor characterization of the users of the Municipal Labor Intermediation Offices (OMIL), the regional challenges through the study of regional labor relevance, among others.
topics. In addition, all regions have different needs, we have our own issues, which leads to always making improvements, providing information for the public policies to be developed, which must be transversal. In addition to this, this year we hope to also work at a communal level and our regional in-depth study will link the lack of water resources with labor aspects, that is, how this influences the labor market as well.
What would you say are the main achievements of the Labor Observatory?
This is the seventh version in the Coquimbo Region and with the UCN, which is very important because it allows for continuous improvements, since there are good practices that are replicated. We have worked all these years with the National Survey of Labor Demand (ENADEL), we have been including various analyses, bulletins and topics that were not included before.
How has the development of the work been?
We have been evolving and changing. At first we worked directly with an OTIC. Then we worked alongside SENCE, at a regional level, and now we are working with the Undersecretariat of Labor, and therefore we work closely with the Seremi del Trabajo. We advise public entities in the sector, SENCE, Seremi del Trabajo, Chile Valora and others. We are more immersed in public policies that have to do with labor issues.
You have a project to work with the Municipal Labor Intermediation Offices (OMIL). How do you envision this work?
It is a study that was proposed for this year. What we seek is to qualitatively and quantitatively characterize the users of the OMIL Municipal Labor Intermediation Offices, with that information we will know what the offer is for those who come to the municipality. We have not previously worked with all the communes, and now we are going to work with the 15 communes, so it is a first step, a new challenge and that will obviously support decision-making at the local and communal level. We have never worked in depth to characterize the users, now we are going to try to cover those who are not included in other studies, which is super interesting.
