On 26th October, the 2nd
INNOTECS conference will take place in Valencia, Spain.
“How to attract more (young) students in
technical studies (and how to fill in the gap between school and company) will
be the theme of the conference and FORAVE will be were responsible for the
round table “How to meet the rapidly changing demands of the companies?”.
Here is the desk research we did for
the conference.
INNOTECS
CONFERENCE
VALENCIA, 26th
OCTOBER 2016
WORLD CAFE - How
to meet the rapidly changing demands of the companies?
Debate Issues
1. What
are the biggest challenges that workers are going to face in the next 20 years?
2. Are
education and vet operators prepared for the future demands of companies?
3. How
can they increase the approach to industry and talk the “same language”?
4. Which
profiles do companies need? How skilled should workers be for industry 4.0?
5. Which
trainers’ profiles do schools need to prepare the new generation working force?
6. Everything
will be connected to everything else. In what way can VET and manufacturing
improve their connection?
ABOUT THE TOPIC
The world is changing and the workforce in a very near future will be
multi-generational, older, and more
highly polarised. Businesses are likely to
retain a smaller
core staff, with
people moving across
organisations and projects,
with the lower-skilled
experiencing increasing insecurity of
employment and income.
People are more likely to
develop portfolio careers
around hybrid skills.
Collaborative business models become more important, and businesses
demand people with excellent project and risk management skills.
In all countries the implications for skills development are momentous.
Many of the jobs that will be generated over the next two decades do not exist
today.
The next most significant trends include a greater customer focus and
more customer-specific adaptation, efforts to reduce lead times, new forms of
marketing and distribution channels (especially in the e-commerce area) and
greater energy efficiency across the production operation. Further trends
included preventive maintenance, automation of inbound logistics, smart
data-gathering and miniaturization.
These additional trends and challenges are closely linked to the issues
raised by industry 4.0 and exponential technologies. Digital Industry 4.0 is
based on cyber-physical production systems that combine communications, IT,
data and physical elements. These systems transform traditional plants into
smart factories. Here, machines "talk" to products and other
machines, objects deliver decision-critical data, and information is processed
and distributed in real time resulting in profound changes to the entire
industrial ecosystem.
The talent requirements and number of skilled workers, the digital
transformation to industry 4.0 will bring new challenges for many employees.
Creative working processes, such as strategic planning or research and
development, will have a greater need for the skills required to identify,
introduce and implement the new and innovative business opportunities offered
by industry 4.0.
New business models and new models for cooperation constitute the real
added value of industry 4.0. Space for
creativity needs to be established. To answer the questions how companies can
learn and how change can be managed will be of key importance for senior
management.
Digitisation increases also the importance of new technical skills,
notably in the case of operating activities and mechanical working processes in
production, purchasing and warehousing and logistics. New, process-dependent systems
making greater use of technology may prove to be a major challenge for existing
employees. In future manufacturing companies will have to pay even greater
attention to developing the competencies of their employees and recruiting a
digitally sophisticated workforce.
THE
IMPLICATIONS OF THESE CHANGES ARE WIDE-RANGING
- Employers will need to take
ownership of skills
in their sectors
and rise to
the challenge of
international competition; develop
career routes and
progression pathways for young
people and those
with lower skills
in particular; and
collaborate with education
and training provides
to ensure learning
provision meets employer needs.
- Individuals will need to adapt to a changing labour market and
patterns of work; take responsibility for investing in and developing their
skills; develop both job specific and soft skills, including collaboration and
communication; and develop the skills required by employers, including
enterprise and management skills.
- Education and training providers will need to collaborate with
employers to ensure that
their offer meets employer needs;
invest in new
modes of learning
and continually update content;
develop content which reflects the role of technology and an increasingly interdisciplinary approach
to work; and
provide more flexible
opportunities for learning.
- Policy makers will need to maximise the public and private markets for
skills, ensuring that
public investment supports
provision that meets
employer needs; encourage
employers to take ownership
of skills and
develop training solutions;
support those with
lower-level skills to
reskill and take
opportunities in a
changing labour market; and
mitigate local, regional and demographic disparities in access to jobs and skills.
WHAT CAN BE DONE
- Building
solid bridges between the world of work and training providers in order to
match skills provision to the needs of enterprises
- Continuous
workplace training and lifelong learning enabling workers and enterprises to
adjust to an increasingly rapid pace of change
- Anticipating
and building competencies for future needs
- Sustained
dialogue between employers and trainers, coordination across government
institutions, labour market
information, employment services and performance reviews are steps to an early
identification of skill needs
- Ensuring
broad access to training opportunities, for women and men, and particularly for
those groups facing greater difficulties, in particular youth, lower skilled
workers, workers with disabilities, rural communities
- Benefits
from adequate investment in good-quality education and skills
- A good
skills development system will be able to: anticipate skill needs; engage employers
and workers in decisions about training
provision, including in
specific sectors; maintain the
quality and relevance of training; make training accessible to all sectors of society
- To
keep training relevant, institutional and financial arrangements must build
solid bridges between the world of learning and the world of work. Bringing
together business and labour, government and training providers, at the local,
industry and national levels, is an effective means of securing the relevance
of training to the changing needs of enterprises and labour markets.
- Maintaining
a close connection between training policies and employment policies creates an
effective bridge between the worlds of learning and of work
Manuela
Guimarães I Teresa Santos
Lousado,
30 September 2016
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