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European year of skills: empowering workers to uphold digital transition

Virtual webinar: Register Now

Covid 19 brought substantial changes to the labour market. Teleworking and platform economy have reshaped the way we understand work and adds new challenges to match employers’ needs and workers’ skills and professional desires. Nowadays, working conditions and well-being at work become all the more important in the light of generalized trends such as the “big quit” or labour shortages. On the one hand, SMEs and strategic sectors such as transportation, healthcare or hospitality find it difficult to recruit new workers and have issues retaining skilled and experienced workers. On the other hand, senior and young populations have it harder to access the labour market, either because of lack of digital skills training or experience in the sector.

To address those challenges reskilling and upskilling are essential factors both to match employers’ and workers’ needs as well as keeping up to the digital transition. Indeed, digital transition offers plenty of new opportunities but also significant challenges on user friendly technologies, digital literacy or new technologies trainings, for example.

In the European Year of Skills, companies, policymakers and public administrations will reflect on the opportunities of investing in skilling and the benefits for workers to gain theorical and practical knowledge.

To better understand the question of skills and digital transition, the exchange will enlighten the following topics:

• Skilling as a means of retaining experienced workers and ensure motivation,
• The importance of training on digital technologies,
• Well-being at work, vocational skilling and working conditions improvement.

To address these questions, we will welcome:

Irene Bellomo, Member of the European Year of Skills Taskforce, European Commission (DG EMPL)
Agnes Roman, Senior Policy Coordinator on Education policy and Advisor on Education & Training policy, ETUC
		Brikena Xhomaqi, Director, Lifelong Learning Platform Brikena is the current Director of the Lifelong Learning Platform (LLLP) and co-chair of the EESC Liaison Group of CSOs. She is the former Head of Office of the European Students’ Union (ESU) and Director of the Erasmus Student Network (ESN), in charge of overall management and responsible for EU funded projects in particular focusing on the dissemination, impact and sustainability. A few of the most successful EU projects among others she was involved were SocialErasmus, Erasmus+ Impact Study and Financing of Student's Future. She has been the research team member and manager of multiple EU funded projects for LLLP, ESN, ESU, IGP, The Class of 2020, Uniplaces and EUA related to learning mobility, higher education financing and employability among others. She has an experience of more than 10 years in the education and non-profit sector at local, national and international level from a volunteer to a management perspective. She graduated in Innovative Project Management at the Polytechnic University of Nice Sophia Antipolis and holds a professional Master Degree in Corporate Strategy and International Development and bachelor in Political Sciences.