Society loses out on potential growth if we do not resolve the structural problem in getting highly-educated graduates from different professions faster in work. However, it is a challenge that many SMEs have no tradition for hiring highly educated staff and that many highly educated graduates have no knowledge of job possibilities in SMEs. Thus, there is an untapped potential in connecting SMEs with a need for development and innovation with newly graduates. The intention is to contribute to increased growth in businesses and create a basis for increased employment-rates. In order to assure that ends meet – graduates getting employment and SMEs getting the staff they need the project will create a cross-border digital platform that will collect inputs from SMEs about their skill shortage and subsequently design an education set-up so that unemployed obtain the sought after skills. Universities and University colleges play a crucial role in the development of society and they have to supply SMEs with strong graduates in order for business to realize their growth potential and ambitions. In this specific project, the partners offer high quality education and the graduates have a strong subject-specific knowledge. Furthermore, the graduates have gained transferable skills such as entrepreneurship, digital literacy and creativity but sometimes those skills need to be refined to meet the demands of a constantly changing labour market. It will be a collaboration between university/university college teachers and enterprises in three countries. This collaboration will ensure that teaching staff get substantial knowledge about the skills that companies need so that will have an impact on their everyday teaching and planning of curriculum and the participation from enterprises to ensure that the competencies presented aligns with the enterprises needs. The objectives of Growth4SMEs 1. Develop and set-up a digital platform - open source where SMEs can register needs for competencies 2. Reactivate already existing university and university colleges’ user panels and open up the digital platform for their registration of demanded competencies 3. Perform analysis of demand of skills both on a cross-country and regional level 4. Develop open and collaborative learning and sharing spaces, such as a MOOC and regional courses co-created in collaboration between universities/university colleges, SMEs and local job centres. 5. Set-up international case-competition in each participating country (job seekers can apply for a grant to participate in one of the other countries) where local/regional business can get solutions to challenges they are facing. 6. More knowledge among teaching staff about demands for skills both at national and international level 900 adult learners will participate in the project and 150 SME interventions. The activities in the project are the build of an agile digital platform that will secure real-time insight into the demand of skills. This insight will provide an overview over skills demanded at an international level as well as a more regional specific demand. The project will make it possible to create tailored courses that will help give young graduates updated skills that complement their education background and at the same time is compliant with the need of business both in the region and in an international context. The courses – both open and collaborative learning and sharing spaces, such as a MOOC and the region specific courses will be co-created with teaching staff from universities and university colleges and enterprises. Furthermore, there will be arranged case-competitions to allow SMEs to hand in challenges and the unemployed graduates will show how their with newly acquired skills can present innovative solutions to problems. Impact of the project will be a better understanding of the demand and supply of competencies and the creation of a stronger link between university/university colleges including teaching staff, job center and SMEs; more adult learners will find their first job in a SMEs, SMEs will be more satified with the supply of competencies and teaching staff have a better understanding of the SMEs need of competencies and how they with changes in the studyprogramme can ease the transition from education to work-life for graduates.
We wanted to get knowledge about skill shortage in SMEs and give adults learners tools to obtain these skills and raise the knowledge among teaching staff about skills needed through: 1. Develop and set-up digital platform 2. Reactive userpanels 3. Perform analysis of demands of skills 3. Develop courses 4. Set-up case-competitions 5. More knowledge among teaching staff These are the overall priorities and what we have obtained when implementing the project. Transparency and recognition of skills and qualifications - We have showed what kind of skills companies are looking for (both on a local, national and international level) and have used this knowledge to create course material. Supporting individuals in acquiring and developing basic skills and key competences - adult learners have had access to the courses and we have trained them through their participation in case-competitions. Cases have been provided by companies Improving and extending the supply of high-quality learning opportunities for adults - the portal Growth4SME with online learning material will be free for teaching staff at HE institutions to use in the future and will furthermore be used by Aarhus Municipality in the training of unemployed graduates.
The consortium applied for the project to investigate how to create a better link between university/university colleges and the labour market. Universities and University colleges play an important role in development of the society and hence they need more knowledge about the skills needed in Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SME) in order to provide the SMEs with appropriate skills and to prepare adult learners on the expectations they will meet from future employers. However, it is a challenge that many SMEs have no tradition for hiring highly educated staff and that many highly educated graduates have no knowledge of job possibilities in SMEs. As a consortium we thought there was an untapped potential in connecting SMEs with a need for development and innovation and with students/graduates with the most recent knowledge. Furthermore, the consortium thinks that in a constantly changing labour market there is a need for creating small updated courses as a supplement to their strong subject-specific knowledge to make sure that the students/graduates meet the skills needed in the businesses. Creating this link will hopefully help businesses to realize their growth potential and ambitions.