Through its membership the IOE provides the largest private sector network in the world. One of the IOE’s key tenets remains the strengthening of national employers’ organizations, in regard to their ability to represent the views of their members effectively with governments and other stakeholders and also in regard to enhancing their level of service delivery to members.

The challenges that face employers’ organizations today are many and varied. Continual changes and developments in the labour market - ageing, migration, new competitive pressures with the emergence of new business groupings - are but a sample of the issues facing them. 

The type of services enterprises are likely to seek from employers’ organizations is also continually evolving and the recent moves away from centralized or even collective bargaining have impacted and will continue to impact on traditional service provision. Changes also within and to the trade union movement affect traditional roles for some employers’ organizations, particularly with regard to bargaining and increasingly with regard to social dialogue.

This changed environment means that the ‘international’ will increasingly encroach more directly on the ‘national and regional’. One of the immediate consequences of this has been that the arena for lobbying has changed, with regional and international organizations now having much more importance.

While changes in the environment in which companies operate have been more apparent in recent times, an important addition to this story is the impact on the capacity of some employers’ organizations. Employers’ organizations are, and will continue to be, increasingly faced with a complex and varied array of issues that im pact on them on a daily basis and need an instant re action.

The increased process of regional integration has entailed a strengthening of regional employers’ organizations and, in this regard, there is a noticeable increase in collaboration between the IOE and regional employers’ organizations. In Europe, UNICE remains an extremely important and valuable partner for the IOE, not just in relation to policy debates in Europe but also on global policy issues. In the Americas, the IOE continued its work through CEATAL at the OAS activities. Relations with the Asian and African employers’ groups, the Confederation of Asia-Pacific Employers (CAPE) and the Pan-African Employers Confederation (PEC) have been also strengthened and the IOE collaborates with other sub-regional organizations on a number of joint initiatives.