Within BEYOND 4.0, a first report has been elaborated presenting current results of research activities in the first months of the topic “Understanding Future Skills”. It is about different aspects of changes in skills requirements due to digitalization in organizations. Two updates will follow when additional data have been collected and processed at company, regional and EU level.
The objective of the report is to provide a better understanding of the new and increasingly important skills needed for future workplaces. It is about matching the demand side of future skills (employers´ and individuals´ requirements) and the supply side (vocational education and training). To categorise the new and increasingly important skills that are needed for digitalisation, an early framework has been developed. After presenting general aspects of the current skills debate, the general framework is described that includes the actors of the demand side and how skills demand is derived from individual and organisational requirements. On the supply side, relevant actors are described and with which topics they deal with. In the centre of the framework, there is a classification of future needed skills (conceptualisation) and the quantitative part of demanded skills showing their proportions and numbers in a macro-level perspective (calculation). In the last chapter of the report, the next steps are shown which will be elaborating the demand side of skills and planned updates for the skills framework.
While this first report is confidential, all essential results will be presented in public during conferences (probably October 2021 in Sofia, Bulgaria) and articles, to be published in 2021. Meanwhile, further insights from analysing future skills demand and offers, will be reported in coming newsletters and events. This will include data from regional and company analysis.
