WORKS Team at Eurocities Conference
Last month, the WORKS team were asked to be a critical friend and present at the Eurocities conference in Ghent, Belgium.
The topic of the Eurocities conference was The Skills Mismatch and Developing 21st Century Skills that are Present in Ghent. The EUROCITIES project is helping cities to consider and define what the relevant 21st Century skills are and to come up with a benchmark that can be used by young people and future job seekers to evaluate their own skills sets and prepare for the skills employers are asking for.
The project is also working with employers by raising awareness on the meaning of 21st century skills so that it can be widely known or agreed upon, making it clearer and more timely to prospective employees.
The WORKS Project Manager, Hayley Galpin, and WORKS Apprentice, Intisar Abdala, were invited to share their reflections on the topic. They were also asked to share good practice about how WORKS supports young people earlier and prepares them for the world of work.
The conference lasted for three days from the 13 – 15 of November 2019.
Day 1, Wednesday 13th November
We took the Eurostar and arrived in Ghent, Belgium, in time for a networking dinner with other cities presenting at the conference. This was a good opportunity to see the diversity of people attending and also to hear the different challenges faced by other countries and how they were looking to change the way we recruit and address some of the challenges in their city.
Day 2, Thursday 14th November
Thursday was jam packed with networking and introductions to those attending the conference – there were representatives from Lille, Lyon, Madrid, Gijon, Netwerkstad Twente, Barcelona and Ghent amongst others including us from the UK!
The focus of the morning was to understand Ghent and the challenges in the city and what they had done to address the skills gap. The Deputy Mayor was present to welcome us and introduce us to the City followed by a presentation from expert speaker, AGORIA, who had conducted research on the current labour market and how this would look in 2030. The research considered the impact of digitalisation and how some jobs will disappear while others will have added or deceased responsibilities or requirements. The presentation also tackled how to train or up-skill current and prospective recruits to prepare them for this new shift in the market. Then we had quick Q&A session.
We were then introduced to Ghent’s strategy – the ‘Skills Navigator’. The presentation discussed how the project is developing an interesting set of practices to focus on the 21st Century skills, including what they are and how employers can reach a consensus on them. The project showed the benefit of working with employers and demonstrated a cost calculator chart that shows a longer profit period if employers take time to train up employees or new jobseekers instead of searching of waiting for the “perfect” candidate.
After a break we then had two more presentations. We then had an accompanying site visit to the Volvo base in Ghent where we took part in skills development practice as part of the Skills Navigators practice. They explained and presented their traineeships and the recruitment strategy they offer to employees to up-skill them for their desired roles or positions.
We were then able to get stuck in as part of a workshop Volvo offer for both new recruits and school students. It aims to provide them with a real-life challenge, experience of work and a project to show them the importance of individuals within a team and quality control within their workforce. This is run very similarly to activities WORKS offer and it was fun to be able to do the workshop ourselves.
In teams, we were asked to do a pit stop exercise and assemble the car parts in the quickest time with the most efficiency and ensuring Volvo levels of quality. Being super competitive, Hayley (WORKS PM) was part of the winning team of the day!
After a busy first day, we managed to fit in some time to explore Ghent and also to attend a networking dinner with those who we had met earlier that day who attended the conference.
Day 3, Friday 15 November
Today, we received a presentation by the North Sea Port on the cross-border labour market in the harbour. North Sea Port and were involved in pitching ideas for the ‘House of Skills’ project in Ghent. This dealt with how the labour market is transforming and the issues that could come up (i.e. retraining the workers to adapt to future roles and teaching/ learning the digital skills). We explored ideas individually, and in teams, to share our expertise, experience and also to evaluate the changes that could be made in the future.
It was then our turn to present our individual team projects and examples of good practices in our country. We presented about Bristol WORKS and how we focus on starting earlier and developing activity to inspire, engage and provide knowledge about the variety of opportunities to young people across the City so they are more greatly aware of local and national Post-16 opportunities and the future labour market data about careers.
This trip was an eye-opening experience as an apprentice. Taking part in this conference was a great experience. I got to learn and understand the different challenges, practices, opportunities and education systems other cities have in place. Surprisingly, apprenticeships aren’t really a viable option in some cities – either falling under unpaid internships or employment. Therefore, it was useful for me to be able to share why, for me, this is a good career route and to share my career journey. I also was able to help present in a European City and travel abroad which I may have not got the opportunity to have done otherwise.
Following this trip, the WORKS PM will be writing up a report on the findings and how we can take some of this insight and knowledge forward to continue to grow the WORKS project which we hope to be able to share!
This was the first WORKS international work trip and it hopefully won’t be the last!
Reflections by Intisar Abdala
