Over the past 2 years, the European Social Partners in the electricity sector, industriAll European Trade Union, the European Public Service Union (EPSU), representing the trade unions and Eureletric, representing the employer organisations have engaged together with project consultant Spin360, in the project Skills2Power. The project receives funding from the European Commission and aims to strengthen the role of national social dialogue in building skills intelligence in the electricity sector. The project targets 6 countries: France, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Spain and Sweden.

Following the outcomes of a previous project promoting the integration of qualified people and ensuring up-to-date skills and employability of mid-career workers, Skills2Power supports the development of concrete joint strategies for monitoring and competence planning in the electricity sector.

To do so, capacity building workshops have been organized bringing together companies, trade unions and education and training providers at sectoral level to discuss about skills needs and exchange ideas, opportunities and future challenges. National 2-day workshops have already been held in France, Italy and Spain on a face-to-face format.

What emerged from such discussions? In a nutshell, in order to build up strategies for monitoring and anticipating the needs for skilling, up- and reskilling of workers in the electricity sector, the following points emerged as crucial:

  • COMMON LANGUAGE: the heterogeneity of stakeholders demands for the creation of a unified sectoral intelligence, supported by common data sharing, information, support and guidance;
  • MATCHING: training provision mechanisms must be always aligned with the demand of the industry in terms of skills needs, in a way that is relevant to labour market needs;
  • METHOD: a cooperation process must be continuous with planned meeting and a constant dissemination activity of facts and results;
  • INNOVATION: leveraging on innovative tools to boost sector attractiveness and workforce engagement are the basis to showcase potential of the sector.

Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, the workshops in Hungary, Romania and Sweden will gather stakeholders together in “virtual” roundtables. For each country, there will be 3 separate on-line meetings where social partners will have the chance to:

  1. Get to know each other better, as well as have an overview of the project, its main results on future skills needs and the national VET system offer at national level;
  2. Be involved in interactive group-works to elaborate concrete proposal based on key sectoral issues and themes;
  3. Contribute to the finalisation of a national roadmap for the electricity sector which will be based on the practical proposals built by their work on the previous day.

Workshop are not only a way to better hear and understand different perspectives within the same sector, but they are also an occasion for practical implementation: major issues, opportunities and challenges are addressed and stakeholders are invited to reflect on concrete strategies for skills development in the Electricity sector.

Study on 'Skills needs developments, vocational education and training systems in the changing electricity sector': EN, DE, FR, ES, IT, CS, RO

Contact: Corinna Zierold (senior policy adviser)