As from May 2018, the Dutch CommTop Foundation is the officially chartered institute in the Netherlands authorised to certify communications professionals, training programmes and occupational profiles for the Dutch communications sector. Is that important? Not immediately, but in the long term it’s definitely a revolution. For professionals, employers and recruiters it’s an enormous cultural shift, which forces many of the existing diplomas and certificates to adapt and reclassify. It also affects the core of professional profiles and organisations in the Dutch communications sector. Not only is implementation of new benchmarks required by up to now established brands for training courses and diplomas, but it also generates new hiring and recruitment procedures. Datamining and automated selection on the basis of competencies and skills aren’t in their infancy anymore, and benchmarking techniques will be increasingly applied for recruiting in the future. Last but not least, even collective tariff agreements (Dutch cao’s) must in future incorporate the new benchmarks.
Woolly concepts and jargon
Never before has it been possible for individuals and institutions to prove their professional level and credentials for recruitment purposes in the communications industry. Competencies and skills have up to now been replaced by mostly woolly concepts, bloated jargon and institutional non-transparency. This won’t change immediately, but for aspiring young professionals with oomph and motivation, students who need to know their market value and professional perspective, for seasoned professionals aiming to optimally position themselves or upgrade their skills on the basis of neutral and clear criteria, for the self-employed and employers who require a clear cost structure, this represents a landslide.
Communications science has common ground with many other scientific disciplines. It’s not in itself a prerequisite in order to work as a public relations officer, journalist, copywriter, blogger, lobbyist, campaigner or PA professional. Lots of professionals in other disciplines and working in communication-related positions have competencies and skills that are part of these now defined benchmarks. In the future, they too will be able to profile themselves more successfully, also in order to retrain or refresh their skills as part of their individual ‘Lifelong Learning’ skills management.
Independent foundation
The Dutch communications sector consists of a dozen different professional organisations, all of which can benefit from greater clarity concerning professional competencies and skills. As an independent foundation, CommTop is not permitted to actively certify education, professionals, functions or assignments itself. It is up to ’the market’, in other words all bodies or entities carrying out tasks and projects in practice and which are involved in professionalisation in the communication sector, to pro-actively do so. For the benefit of employees and self-employed professionals and for the assessment of projects and contracts, it is crucial that in future fair and clear benchmarking is used. It will be of national and international significance in order to create greater uniformity and labour mobility on the basis of job descriptions, vacancies, tenders and contracts.
The Dutch are usually rather fond of innovation and ‘disruption’ – not always with a long-term vision. I’m native Dutch and should know. In this case however, the Dutch communications sector does lead the way with a clear and neutral yardstick for competencies and skills, that merits international recognition and adoption. This is particularly relevant in the context of EQF- and ECTS-standards, which will generate more and reliable international labour mobility.
Fairer remuneration
All this will in future make remuneration and fees easier to structure and fairer, also in an international perspective. Expats, students and academics, professionals who’d like to temporarily work abroad, employers, journalists, broadcasters, payrolling and headhunting companies, trainers and education institutions for the (international) communications industry will benefit. Last but not least, it makes sense and will pay off for every individual in paid employment or as a self-employed person, whose income continues to be under severe pressure in the near future – even more so, without individual certification and benchmarking.