The purpose of this project is to promote an innovative organization approach for working, meeting the needs of a market and labour world that is more than ever globalized, digitally embedded and ever changing. As physical boundaries tend to dissolve, the traditional workplace transform itself in wherever and whenever the worker can be: at office, at home, at the airport, at someone else’ office or in a co-working space. This approach can impact positively on the life of workers as well as on companies’ life, by boosting productivity, improve the quality of life and promote a better balance between family, leisure and work time. Innovation and creativity can also be stimulated by this new way of organizing day and nighttime. But all this transformation requires people and companies properly skilled, otherwise they won’t stay competitive and will not benefit from those changes. The project addresses these needs by define a methodology for providing key staff and companies with a set of critical skills. This skill-set is mostly digital but also encompasses communication, organization and stress management. The project therefore aims to: a) - Identify and define best practices and to define the profile of the “ideal” digital worker and employer, so to define consequently their skillset and competence-based training and certification b) - Design and test the training to acquire the skills at issue. The training will be mainly digital based, delivered as a MOOC and composed of Learning Objects, Open Educational Resources and Learning Outcomes. It will be structured on EQF level 4-7 – thus essentially for HE and VET c) - Design and test the certification scheme for workers and employers, with clear evaluation rubrics, audit and awarding mechanism and based on the innovative approach and tools of (digital) Open Badges d) - Promote the adoption of the model, acting holistically to let the various components of the labour market overcome the obstacles and enhance productivity, personal and community well being. Approximately in total 400 persons will be directly involved in the activities organized by the project: - 108 in the research as informants - 24 education professionals as trainees - 80 employers/HR managers and workers in the trials - 170 participants in the multiplier events. Trained trainers will train in turn 10 other professionals per country, therefore approximately other 60 VET and HE staff will be involved. Indirectly, a large audience will benefit from project activities and in particular from dissemination. About 1,000 subscribers are expected for the project newsletter. About 500 recipients are expected for final documents (reports and policy paper). Promotional videos will be uploaded on YouTube project dedicated channel and at least 10,000 views can be expected. The project website is expected to be visited by about 3,000 visitors at all. Given the overall goal of creation the ideal workplace - including skills, settings and organization – the project staff will act as a prototype: some of them already are digital workers and, all together, they will keep on working in this way within the project framework, to be considered as the project digital workplace laboratory.
At the end of November 2017, the Digital Workplace project has reached its end. The project ran for two years, funded under the European Commission’s Erasmus+ VET, by a consortium of 6 organizations from 5 EU countries: ARES (Italy) lead partner, GAIA and TELEFONICA (Spain), DEKRA (Germany), Hellenic Open University (Greece) e INNOVENTUM (Finland). The overall objective of the project was to promote the adoption of an innovative, highly effective and productive organizational model of work based on performance and results, not on timetable and control. We called it Digital Workplace because we put the emphasis on the technological environment that enables, today, a totally different approach to work: work is not a place anymore, but a capacity supported by technologies. During our two years journey together, we made researches, processed data, created training programmes, met very interesting people, had and solved problems, visited nice places, tested the training developed and compared different work cultures and approaches. We learnt a lot. We, above all, learnt that innovation is a hard job and that many things have to be ready for an in-depth innovation process – like the one we proposed - to be implemented with success. Now we know that Digital – or remote, or smart, or etc. (it can have many different names) – work is not a panacea, nor it can be applied to everyone in every kind of situation. It is based on mutual trust between employer and employee, actual sharing of common goals, and the possession of a series of soft and technical skills. There is no place for anxiety of control or fear of isolation, if the process is properly shaped. Instead, there is much room for a better quality of life, more creativity and productivity, less pollution and waste of time in the traffic jam. Definitely, if properly “built”, a Digital Workplace can be a really good “place” to stay. To support this transformation process, we developed and tested a series of tools: on the basis of a preliminary research with 110 respondents, we drafted two complementary training programmes, for employers and employees, that have been tested during three trials in Spain, Germany and Italy by 24 trainers specifically trained during a training week in Italy as “Digital Workplace Experts”. The trials involved 76 people (trainers, entrepreneurs, managers, workers). The training programmes were structured in a MOOC format, following the most accredited principles of Instructional Design. Competences acquired and/or already possessed were certified via a special Open Badge, designed and issued in collaboration with BESTR, the most important badge issuer in Italy. Through targeted events and tools – multiplier events, newletters, communication campaign with media and social media – we informed over 2000 people about the project and the opportunities of organizational innovation supported by technology. Finally, a policy paper summarized in “ten commandments plus one” the most important lessons we learnt, with the aim of helping other people and organizations interested in the Digital Workplace. All project products - and much more - are available on the project web platform digitalworkplace.education.