“How can social dialogue embrace digital skills for SMES?”. This is the title of the public workshop organized in the context of the project Industrial Relations and Social Dialogue for an Economy and a Society “4.0” (IRESDES4.0), next friday april 29th, 2022 in Brussels at the Residence Palace (Rue de la Loi 155) from 10 to 12 pm.
The event will bring together researchers, stakeholders and representatives from unions and employers to discuss different tools and instruments available for social partners to facilitate digital skills development. It will also look at the preliminary findings of the IRESDES 4.0 project and concrete stories and examples of how collaborative labour agreements and other tools (such as mutually agreed guidelines, etc.) can support skills development at the company sectoral and territorial level.
Almost two years ago, social partners signed the European Social Partners’ Framework Agreement on Digitalisation (Agreement). One of the key pillars of the Agreement is Digital skills, as it stresses an urgent need to prepare a current and future workforce and enterprises with the appropriate digital skills. Meanwhile, Digital Decade 2030 targets highlight the goal to reach 20 million ICT specialists in Europe and ensure that 80% of the population is acquainted with more basic digital skills.
Although significant progress has been made in the past years, digital skills gap remains one of the key societal challenges in Europe. In this light, collaboration among social partners has proved to be an important facilitator to develop digital skills in the European workforce.
