Skills development of workers for the industry in the European Commission

The nature of work and the ways it is performed have changed multiple times and throughout human history. However, the pace of change has accelerated significantly, largely due to different Industrial Revolutions. Skills continue to be the best guarantor of social mobility and opportunity. However, they are not static and need to be updated and fine-tuned throughout working lives. That’s why it’s important to focus on vocational education and skill development of workers. The most important capital for the world of work ahead is skills that’s lead European Social Fund and the European Regional Development Fund to inject over 30 billion EUR to support skills development in the period 2014-2020, while the Erasmus and program support skills development in education and training with nearly 15 billion EUR. Industry 4.0, which started off as a brainchild of Germany, is being adopted by countries around the world. Europe accounts for more than a third of global Industry 4.0 investments. In fact, companies that use Industry 4.0 technology can perform 10 times better than their peers by being 10 times more effective, efficient and/or faster. Industry 4.0 does not start and end with supply chain or production. Its reach could be much broader, affecting every industry and sector, it can improve business operations and revenue growth, transforming products and the customer experience. That’s lead to big differences in the workers of the industrial sector which will need to change their skills development strategy to match with challenges of Industry 4.0. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to study and analyze the skills, knowledge, attitudes and competencies of workers for the industry in the European Commission in general and Industry 4.0 in specific. First, we give an overview of the skills worldwide to show that the skills needed for the future are not just about science and technology. Human skills like creativity, leadership, and empathy will be in demand, therefore some directions to emphasise the development of skills will be discussed. After that, we will start focusing on the European commission industrial sector to understand what are the policies they established to decrease the skills gap by introducing e.g., new skills agenda and launching a European Pillar of Social Rights. Secondly, we will see how the Industry 4.0 effects European commission industry, which could boost the productivity and value added of European industries and stimulate economic growth. In this work, we will focuses on three main sectors, Automotive, ICT and Food industrial sectors. Each of these sectors is analyzed and studied to see what are the actions needed by taking into account the knowledge, competencies and attitudes of the workers in order to reduce the skills gap in each sector. The preferences of enterprises will depend on the type of industrial sector: small and medium enterprise (SME) and large enterprise. We will see in this work that each enterprise has it is own challenges and opportunities. Therefore, it’s important to classify the enterprises to study the characteristic for each of them and to see how they reflect on worker skills. Moreover, we will show the benefits of Industry 4.0 on each of the previous main sectors and what are the competencies and skills needed to cope with Industry 4.0. Finally, we will discuss what are the skills policies that can be taken to improve the knowledge and the competencies of the workers.