Emerging technologies continue to reshape labour markets, and those trends have only accelerated with the pandemic. The digital transformation is indeed becoming increasingly pervasive in people’s life, companies and society. It is a transformation that, besides being a profound cultural change, certainly requires also an evolution of work and careers.
According to the report “Towards a Reskilling Revolution” issued in 2019 by the World Economic Forum, the top barrier that Financial Services companies face when trying to adopt new technologies are related to skills gaps, both in local labour markets (74%) and in the companies’ leadership teams (43%). Another significant barrier is the lack of understanding for opportunities that new technologies offer (51%).
All these barriers require a workforce with additional skills, a need which is speeding up as the call for digital increases.
Today companies reckon difficult to find the right resources, as the demand of companies, especially in ICT, exceeds the talents that the academic system can produce.
The findings of the “Osservatorio delle Competenze Digitali” in Italy are very clear: between 2019 and 2021 there is a gap between demand and supply of ICT graduates of about 28.5 thousand resources.
Moreover, there is a huge need to work on the upskill of students and graduates to help them build a professional profile which will be prized by the labour market, as today we observe a deep change in the skills required for many existing professions.
New jobs require indeed new technical skills particularly related to the world of big data, artificial intelligence, IoT, robotics, cloud computing, and smart products. Contextually, a great relevance of soft skills, such as teamwork, creativity, responsibility, is emerging also for ICT professions, to contribute to make the most of new digital technologies with the idea to be part of a “company system” able to support the process improvement and the continuous innovation.
In our company we strongly believe in continuous learning and reskilling, which is a must for ICT.
Therefore, over the past years we set up an internal Academy, which is focused on providing technical, functional and soft skill trainings to our employees.
But the need for highly specialized people requires also a network action: government institutions, universities and companies, like us, should work together to identify alternative ways to close the gap and invest on new skills.
With this approach in mind we are very pleased with the launch of a very virtuous initiative, in the value of which we strongly believe: on February 2nd the first-level Master’s degree “Smart Product Design 4.0” kicked off, as a result of an agreement signed between the industrial association Confindustria Canavese and Politecnico di Torino. The Master, which is funded by the Piedmont Region, involves 13 young graduates who will be hired by us and Olivetti to follow an academic and company training lasting 24 months.
We have always been convinced that the link between the academic world and the corporate world is the key to offer girls and boys, who are approaching the labour market, the opportunity to upskill and meet the needs of many companies, like ours.
Learning by doing, facing real and concrete situations has always been, and still is, the best way to build a complete professionalism, especially in the ICT field.
We are therefore very proud to take part in such collaborations which contribute to reduce the existing gap between the demand for digital skills and the supply of the academic system and we look forward to be involved in other systemic actions to build the future.
