The European Innovation Council and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Executive Agency (EISMEA) has issued a report “Upskilling and reskilling in the post-covid era : fostering new services and jobs creation : three scenarios for 2030: final report”.

Upskilling and reskilling are key priorities for policymakers across the EU, especially in relation to the social and technological changes made evident recently by the COVID-19 pandemic. Upskilling and reskilling goals set by the EU in such documents as the European Skills Agenda, the Digital Decade and the EU Industrial Strategy are ambitious, considering the growing inequalities between the well and poorly educated. According to the report’s authors, in order to reach the EU’s goals, governments and stakeholders should intensify and scale-up their actions towards a massive upskilling and reskilling of workers. In this context, three scenarios for Europe 2030 were developed:

• The Vision scenario – this is the most advantageous scenario, in which Europe recovers economic growth faster than predicted and uses the economic crises as an opportunity to upskill and reskill the workforce. This is the benchmark scenario for the two others.
• The Middle ground scenario – in this scenario, the implemented policies to upskill workers were only partially successful because the main beneficiaries of the proposed solutions were large corporations and highly-skilled workers .
• The Muddling through scenario – this scenario supposes a large polarisation among workers in their skill levels caused by the failure of post-COVID recovery and lack of coordination in the activities undertaken by social partners.

The report authors proposed ten recommendations to help fulfil the vision scenario:

1.  Skills and training intelligence – create platforms containing information on upskilling and reskilling based on analytics and intelligence.
2.  Policy roadmaps – on the national and regional level coordinated by a single entity.
3.  Policy toolbox – deliver tools and solutions for upskilling and reskilling, including a library of best practices.
4.  Upskilling roadmaps for everyone – develop and use analytics-based frameworks for change at company and individual levels and provide access to those frameworks.
5.  Electronic Skills Records – develop a framework for individual electronic skills records based on Europass, micro-credentials and skills ontologies.
6.  European skills platform for citizens – further strengthen platform-based services for citizens and businesses on skills information, funding options, career support and recruitment.
7.  Develop in-workplace systems for “Just enough, just in time, just for me” learning – create multi-stakeholder partnerships for the development of 3J-based learning systems.
8.  Sectoral ecosystem solutions – foster large scale and impactful sectoral approaches, including blueprints for sectoral cooperation on skills
9.  Boost skills efficiency and regional development through smart and regional brokerage – scale up smart brokerage, mechanisms and platforms for match-making initiatives.
10.  Sectoral skills ontologies – further develop sectoral skills ontologies imitating the development of the European e-Competence Framework.

Good practices from across the EU relating to the recommendations are also an added value of the report.

More information is provided in the report.