In 2019, the International Labour Organization published a report which points that in almost every country SMEs are an important actor of job development and account for an increasing share of employment. Digital innovation has the capacity to transform practices, raise performance and increase growth across all industry sectors. Digital change wants that individuals need the necessary skills to adapt. This will necessitate changes to educational systems and an increased need for on the job training to understand the benefits of digital change. The Hol Up Project aims to upskill competences of SMEs, VET Institutions and VET Providers in a holistic way in order to prepare them to the future works in the digital era. The project will do this by focusing on these two issues: (1) What kind of jobs will the market need in the next few years? (2) What kind of competence does the educational organizations need to teach? For the first question, It can be said that forthcoming employment needs a high level of knowledge and skills and constant assets in education is required in order to deal with the rate of change brought about by developments in digital technology. Hol Up project will work not only with SMEs to help them develop their future workforce, meeting their current and future needs, but also with VET institutions and VET providers to mitigate their inefficiencies on shaping the future workforce in SMEs. The Hol Up project primary target groups can be defined under two groups: -The first group are the SMEs or owners of the SMEs and managers or human resources managers of the SMEs that aim to shape their future work and employment process. -The second group are the VET institutions and VET providers, universities, professional organizations, Chambers, research centers, policy makers, public authorities and other stakeholders who specifically focus on the needs of SMEs in the age of the digital era. In addition to this, the project will help SMEs in the partner countries understand and navigate the future workforce through project’s Intellectual Outputs. In this regard the Hol Up Project will support the development of key competences, including basic skills of digital era. This will include a critical thinking methodology in accordance with the fast changing world. Besides Hol Up project will provide a holistic view to VET institutions and VET providers which introduce systematic approaches in work based settings (including creation of workforce skills plan), as well as through the requirements of the digital era. This will enable to build a strategic partnership between micro, small and medium sized companies and VET Institutions/VET providers aimed at developing joint competences of future workforce and continuing VET. In this regard the project firstly, will help the SMEs to integrate their skills and internal employment policy to ensure it is aligned with demand and responsive to changing patterns of digital era’s employment process. Secondly, it will ensure that employers are able to recruit and retain the diverse skills and talent they need to thrive from within and beyond their region. Thirdly, the project will help VET institutions and VET providers to design their training contents for today’s and tomorrow's jobs. In this regard, the expected results of this project are below: -The holistic approach will provide the gap analysis between existing competences and future competences of SMEs and VET institutions/providers for future jobs and competences in partner countries. -The holistic approach, which includes tracking and developing skills governance model for shaping the future of work force, will provide good workforce planning for SMEs and VET institutions/providers. - The holistic approach will provide a guide included how SMEs and VET institutions/providers can deal with shaping the future of work in their organisations via upskilling competences of both existing employees and future employees. -The holistic approach will provide how VET Institutions and VET Providers can build a dual side relationship and communication which not only increase the competences of the workers but also upskilling the employers and SMEs. -The holistic approach will provide how SMEs of the project can develop “Hol Up Self-paced Open Online Course” and how VET Institutions and VET Providers can meet the requirements of the digital era. Finally, Hol Up will will create an awareness on upskilling policy as an increasingly popular approach taken by forward-thinking SMEs, help SMEs overcome barriers to growth and competitiveness not only in private sector but also in the public sector, provide easy access/preparation to future workforce community, which allows to exchange experiences from different European Countries, provide a road map for SMEs and VET institutions/providers in order to fill the unemployment gap and contribute to build the future.
Hol Up project aimed to develop a holistic approach to SMEs by spreading an upskilling strategy which was a methodological tool to transition SMEs with relevant skills to the workforce. This strategy was built on simple organizational change management principles related with real time requirements of the digital era. By actualizing its innovative side, the Hol Up Project based on the sophisticated curriculum, which was developed through pre-need analysis realized in 2019 by the two partners of this project MSKU and Proeduca. Besides, the upskilling strategy was a useful tool in driving digital change and preparing an efficient workforce skills plan under the view of critical thinking methodology. In addition to this, Hol Up contributed directly to develop unique skills governance model for shaping the future of work in SMEs, created an awareness on upskilling policy as an increasingly popular approach taken by forward-thinking SMEs, helped SMEs overcome barriers to growth and competitiveness not only in private sector but also in the public sector, provided easy access/preparation to future workforce community, which allowed to exchange experiences from different European Countries, provided a road map for SMEs and VET institutions/providers in order to filled the unemployment gap and contribute to build the future. Hol Up produced a comprehensive set of resources to support SMEs for shaping the future workforce in the digital business environment. These included: IO1 - Analyze the gap between existing competences and expected future competences of SMEs and VET institutions/providers for future jobs in partner countries. This output drew upon the comparative analysis and the conceptualisation of the gap in the existing labour market needs and future jobs’ requirements from the perspective of SMEs and VET institutions/providers. Also this output manifested different attitudes of the SMEs and VET institutions/providers at the EU level. End of this output “Hol Up Gap Report” was produced, was translated into all partner languages and was published via Hol Up OER Platform in all partner languages. IO2 – The Holistic Approach Guide for upskilling competences: This output had three stages: The first stage (IO2/Task1) was to develop skills governance model for shaping the future of workforce: According to the European Commision Report (2015), skills governance was seen as a system aimed at balancing supply and demand of skills and to provide a “good skills” basis for further economic development. This model included stakeholders from the public, private and third sector who were involved in implementing and using the skills governance system. In this output, Skills Governance Model was suggested by partners which covers planning and controlling – to different degrees - the national, regional and local offer of education and training and designing mechanisms for assuring the quality of training in partner countries. It comprised a negotiation perspective, which represented how to manage the needs of employers’, (future) employees’ and the VET education system goals, from a short-term, medium-term and long-term perspective via using a multi level governance approach. The second stage (IO2/Task2) was dedicated to SMEs in order to show how SMEs could deal with shaping the future of work in their organisations via upskilling competences of both existing employees and future employees. The third stage (IO2/Task3) was dedicated to VET Institutions and VET Providers in order to show how they could build a dual side relationship and communication which not only increased the competences of the workers but also upskilled the employers and SMEs. End of this output “Hol Up Guide” was produced, was translated into all partner languages and was published via Hol Up OER Platform in all partner languages. IO3 – Develop “Hol Up Self-paced Open Online Course”: Provided high quality and timely education and training responses to evolving enterprise and skills needs. The self-paced Open Online Course contained the materials and resources required to take the learner through the programme in a flexible way that built on their capacity to enterprise and skills needs.Self-paced courses did not follow a set schedule. All of the course materials were available. End of this output “Hol Up Self-paced Open Online Course” was produced, was translated into all partner languages and was published via Hol Up OER Platform in all partner languages.
In 2019, the International Labour Organization published a report which pointed out that in almost every country SMEs were an important factor of job development and account for an increasing share of employment. Digital innovation had the capacity to transform practices, raise performance and increase growth across all industry sectors. Digital change meant that individuals needed the necessary skills to adapt. This would necessitate changes to educational systems and an increased need for on the job training to understand the benefits of digital change. The Hol Up Project aimed to upskill the competences of SMEs, VET Institutions and VET Providers in a holistic way in order to prepare them for future work in the digital era. The project did this by focusing on these two issues: (1) What kind of jobs would the market need in the next few years? (2) What kind of competence did the educational organizations need to teach? For the first question, It could be said that forthcoming employment needs a high level of knowledge and skills and constant assets in education was required in order to deal with the rate of change brought about by developments in digital technology. Since skills had become the key driver of individual well-being and economic success in the 21st century, without proper investment in skills, people languished on the margins of society, technological progress did not translate into growth, and countries could no longer compete in an increasingly knowledge - based economy. Besides, for the second question it was possible to point that skills could be supported through the true training and development, environment and culture, and performance-management approach. In this regard, since education and training had been identified as one of the most critical factors shaping workforce outcomes in the future, upskilling policy of SMEs or individuals were the main milestone of this project. On the basis of how these two issues were solved Hol Up consortium had conducted research (pre-need analysis before writing Project proposal) in partner countries. According to the findings in a digital era it was vital to have a dual side relationship and communication which not only increased the competences of the workers but also upskilled the employers of SMEs, VET institutions and VET providers. This was not a necessity for the partner countries, but for the EU it was important in order to be more competitive. And, above all, required the right leadership, culture, and employer experience. But this required action, not just discussion and Human Resources could lead the way. Hol Up Project adopted the “Open and Flexible Training Programmes” in order to deal with the aforementioned problems. This training approach focused on gathering real time skills demand, continued updated analyses of market needs, developed flexible training programmes to the main target groups. Overall, the completed results of this project were below: The holistic approach provided the gap analysis between existing competences and future competences of SMEs and VET institutions/providers for future jobs and competences in partner countries. The holistic approach, which included tracking and developing skills governance model for shaping the future of the workforce, provided good workforce planning for SMEs and VET institutions/providers. The holistic approach provided a guide included how SMEs and VET institutions/providers could deal with shaping the future of work in their organisations via upskilling competences of both existing employees and future employees. The holistic approach provided how VET Institutions and VET Providers could build a dual side relationship and communication which not only increased the competences of the workers but also upskilled the employers and SMEs. The holistic approach provided how SMEs of the project could develop “Hol Up Self-paced Open Online Course” and how VET Institutions and VET Providers could meet the requirements of the digital era.