La formazione professionale continua tra responsabilizzazione dell'impresa e individualizzazione dei percorsi professionali. Lezioni dal modello francese.

This research aims to explore the most relevant legal tools developed to support the access of people, already active in the labour market, to vocational training measures; focusing on the protective role they may play both in the individual employment relationship and in the labour market. Regarding the first thematic core, the research will point out that current flexible productive structures require continuous realignment process of workers’ professional capital vis-a-vis the organizational needs. As far as the labour market dimension is concerned, according to the most recent theoretical perspectives, it is highlighted how training tools can assume an essential function in the dimension of professional security when projected towards the preventive protection of employment transitions. Starting from these premises, this research investigates possible regulatory answers to empower employers in order to maintain their workers professionalism, as well as to guarantee the employment security dimension. 2 In order to identify the most pertinent regulatory solutions, different approaches and instruments are analysed. In particular, the French and Italian legal systems are compared. These systems have adopted extremely different approaches to vocational training: in France the development of a complete and organic continuing training framework has been one of the absolute priorities in the field of social legislation, while in Italy, at the moment, there is no structured and unitary discipline on the matter. In particular, the comparative analysis reveals that in the French legal system, both the needs of adapting professional skills to organizational changes, and the "preventive" protection of employment transitions have found suitable regulatory responses. They have been provided through the provision of a complex system of employers’ duties, as well as by forecasting specific tools allowing direct and individual access to training measures. To the contrary, the Italian legal framework lacks clear requirements designed to empower companies with regard to the adaptation or development of the human capital of their workforce Furthermore, the Italian legal system does not provide for an individual right to training, which would allow workers to independently access training, on the basis of a personal and conscious prospect of professional development.