Purposes and Global logic of the work

The aim of this work is to provide frameworks of competencies for the job of driver, the traffic planning function and the commercial function in the road haulage sector, common to all the member states. These common frames are aiming :

• to facilitate the definition of jobs or functions within companies, and their possible modes of upgrading,
• to enable employees to express and assess their professional skills and their level of qualification in relation to their work and to their aspirations,
• to guide the teaching and training policies and systems implemented in each of the member States in order to move towards the development of a professionalisation system at a European level.

The intention is not to arrive to a very specific definition of each post dedicated to the exercise of these activities but to apprehend them globally. As a matter of fact, whilst such jobs or functions are easy to identify within the firms, their general definition nonetheless remains difficult, due to their contingency with the countries and organisations within which they are implemented - in particular for the commercial and the traffic planning activities. A presentation of the general logic of this work to different European road haulage firms has in particular made it possible to put forward the notion that the way in which these functions are perceived varies considerably according to the size of the firm and to the way in which this firm is organised. For example, a person may be in charge both of traffic planning and of the commercial aspects within a small firm, whereas a large company will have a specific commercial division with several employees driving sales forces covering a given territory, and issuing transportation orders to a team of operators whose commercial function will be relatively limited. In some cases (particularly in smaller companies) a haulier also works as truck driver. So the several fields of activities linked to the jobs studied, are often split up into different functions or posts.

The job or function studied are interpreted in their broadest sense. The differences between enterprises of different sizes, or between the countries' specificity are not considered specifically. The only particularities taken into account are specific features linked to the conditions of the exercise of the activity studied.

Methodology

The elaboration of a framework of competencies for a job calls for thinking both on the content (the job in itself) and on the support itself (the conditions of structuration of the information). For these reasons, it appears important:

• to identify what today are the tasks / skills required by firms in the sector for the job/functions examined (collecting and processing data);
  • How is this issue addressed in each of the countries of the Union (skills required by companies, conditions of access to the job, training system, etc.) ?
  • What are the specificities in terms of professionalisation, or of training systems among the various countries ?
  • How are the different jobs and skills defined ?
  • Towards what types of skills should we have to tend at a European level ?
  • ...
• to consider the conditions in which the various information thus identified can be organised and prioritised;
  • How should this information be organised ?
  • According to what logic ?
  • On the basis of what criteria ?
• finally, to think about the " lifetime " of the various contents and supports, in other words the processes for updating the frameworks of competencies in time.

One of the intrinsic difficulties in the construction of a framework of competencies lies in the fact that it suggests, for obvious pedagogical reasons, an excessively static/analytical vision of the very notion of skills and jobs, whereas they are in fact contingent, dynamic and therefore eminently systemic. Therefore, it seems to be important to think about the conditions of interdependence between the various contents and supports :

• how are the criteria adopted to assist in presenting the framework likely to influence each other ?
• how can one anticipate in terms of ranking with respect to the contexts in which these skills will be implemented ?
• ...

The methodology developed in this work aims at integrating these different issues. It's based on the following general logic :

• establishing a general employment profile for the jobs and functions studied, making it possible to comply with the representations/interpretations of the various key players in the sector in each of the member States,
• identifying the structural fields of activity enabling the characterisation of the jobs/functions studied,
• outlining for each field of activity :
  • the main tasks to be developed within the scope of their practice,
  • the dispositions/skills considered as crucial in the accomplishment of those tasks (core-competencies)
• apprehending the possible interactions between such main fields of activity by highlighting their common tasks,
• designing different "reading grids" and consequently defining the criteria likely to take due account of the specific features of the jobs/functions studied. Each of these criteria requires different qualifications, knowledge and skills. They may also influence the specific tasks related to a job. The purpose of this work is less that of drawing up a simple shopping list of all the skills required overall by firms in the sector, but more of understanding towards what levels of professionalisation it is desirable to move as from the general framework and according to the conditions of undertaking these activities.

This study proceeds by interdependent steps (see fig. 1). The idea is to progressively elaborate contents and to foster their mutual enrichment. This enrichment is accomplished through different forms or operational validations on the basis of interviews of representative actors involved in the sector.