The Regional Labour Observatory (OLR) will study how the lack of water resources affects the labour 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.
For years, academia has been contributing to achieving the observatory’s mission: to produce knowledge about the gaps between supply and demand for jobs in the labour market, and to move towards anticipating future gaps. The main objective is to improve the employability of workers, promote business productivity and regional development, providing relevant information for public and private decision-making.
As the years go by, the challenges increase, challenges that the new Regional Director of the Labor Observatory, Karen Vargas Santander, who is an academic at the School of Business Sciences and Director of the Master’s in Business Administration at the UCN, spoke to us about.
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 of assuming the regional leadership of the Labor Observatory?
The Labor Observatory is challenging, there are many aspects, there is the labor situation, the deepening that we want to do about 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), 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 being replicated. We have worked all these years with the National Labor Demand Survey (ENADEL), we have been including various analyses, bulletins and topics that were not included before.
How has the work developed?
We have been evolving and changing, at first we worked directly with an OTIC. Then we worked alongside SENCE, at the regional level, and now we are working with the Undersecretary 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 see this work?
It is a study that was proposed for this year. What we are looking for is to qualitatively and quantitatively characterize the users of the Municipal Labor Intermediation Offices OMIL, 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 obviously will 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.
