Summative Evaluation of Work Sharing while Learning and Increased Referrals to Training. Final Report

Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. Service Canada, Ottawa, ON K1A 0J9, Canada. Tel: 800-926-9105; Fax: 613-941-1827; Web site: http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/home.shtml

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33

Evidence; Job Sharing; Summative Evaluation; Program Evaluation; Pilot Projects; Foreign Countries; Labor Force Development; Human Resources; Training; Unemployment; Older Adults; Adult Education; Models; Administrators; Educational Policy

978-0-662-40898-7

In October of 2002, Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) announced that it would participate in a $246.5 million Government of Canada initiative to support workers and communities in regions of high unemployment. The $71 million HRSDC portion was composed of three primary components: (1) Work Sharing While Learning (WSWL)--This new program adds a training component to the traditional Work Sharing program and targets firms facing a structural downturn; (2) Increased Referrals to Training (IRT)--This new initiative is intended to test and evaluate the effects of referring more individuals to training when they are facing job loss; and (3) Older Workers Pilot Projects Initiative (OWPPI)--A series of pilot projects, designed to encourage labour force attachment on the part of older workers, was extended until March 31, 2004. WSWL and IRT are evaluated separately from OWPPI, since OWPPI was already underway at the time of the announcement and already had an evaluation strategy in place. However, participation in WSWL and IRT was very limited at the time of the project planning (October 2003). Therefore, it was proposed that the evaluation be conducted in two phases. Phase I explores the reasons for the low take-up of the two programs. If participation in the programs increases sufficiently to warrant a more complete evaluation, Phase II is to examine traditional evaluation issues such as program outcomes and impacts. To date (March 2004), participation remains very low, and it seems unlikely that the Phase II portion of the evaluation will be warranted. This report presents the findings of Phase I of the evaluation of WSWL and IRT. It focuses on explaining the reasons for the lack of program take-up in order to provide lessons for future policy development. In the following section, the two programs are described. The third section presents the evaluation questions and the lines of evidence used to answer them. The fourth section presents the findings. The fifth and final section presents a summary and conclusions. List of Documents is appended. (Contains 2 figures, 1 table and 5 footnotes.)

ERIC

2011

ED519647