14 June, 2022
Digital Upskilling for All: overview
The European social partners for the telecommunications sector – UNI Europa ICTS, the European trade union federation for service workers, and ETNO, the European Telecommunication Network Operators’ Association – have been working on the “Digital Upskilling for All!” project (DUFA!, #Upskilling4All) since the beginning of 2020.
DUFA! is a social dialogue project (co-financed by the EU) that aims to develop best practices related to digital upskilling, inclusion and diversity to serve as examples for the workforce of the European telecommunications sector. Here below are the main developments of the initiative - click on the links to discover more and follow the videos.
Index:
1. Press release to find out more about the initiative's ambitions
2. Video Interviews
3. DUFA! - Desktop Research & Telecom Survey
4. Best Practices to increase gender diversity in the telecom workforce
5. Best Practices to increase the employability of the ageing workforce in the Telecom sector
6. Final Conference
7. Dissemination & Achievements
1. Press Release to find out more about the initiative's ambitions.
2. Video Interviews about the project
3.Digital Upskilling for All! - desktop research & telecom survey
4. Deep Dive on Digital Upskilling Best Practices to increase gender diversity in the telecom workforce
Held on 25 February 2021, this round table gathered experts from the ICT sector to share identified best practices promoting gender diversity along the employee journey in a company. Only, 12% of executives in leading telecom companies are female and the DESI 2020 report that shows that only 1 out of 6 ICT specialists are women. 52 representatives from 24 companies/organizations participated in the full day event and were joined by Mercer Consulting.
Video recordings:
- Torkild Holmboe-Hay, Danish trade union 3F, Hilfr Collective Agreement Online Platform.
- Kathryn Cullen, Technology Ireland Software Skillnet , Women Reboot’s program.
- Armand Leblois, , Cisco’s Network Academy.
- Aniela Unguresan, and Samira Tavares Kruth Verdade, Capgemini: Young Women In Tech Program.
- Vidya Krishan, Ericsson: Design Your Future Program
The power point presentations of this roundtable on gender diversity are available here.
The highlights of this roundtable on gender are available here.
5. Deep Dive on Digital Upskilling Best Practices to increase the employability of the ageing workforce in the Telecom sector
Held on 3 June 2021, This second round table included 41 representatives from 22 companies/organisations who discussed the best practices identified so far during the DUFA project, to increase the employability of the ageing workforce in the European telecom sector and to facilitate a discussion around ageism in the workplace: In Europe, 44% of people believe ageism is a serious problem, compared with 64% in the UK as a whole and digital upskilling can help the ageing workforce employability and also will help the companies to stay competitive.
Video recordings:
- Javier Miranda representing DigitalES, ICT supporting the professional qualifications requirements and 5G specialisation.
- Andrea Rubera from TIM, overview of the Longevity Program developed to support the ongoing skills development of its aging workforce.
- Annita Fjuk, upskilling for the Digidel program at the Norwegian Ministry of Modernisation.
- Alessandro Cortesi - case study examples of implementing Reverse Mentoring as a way to support age diversity and upskilling.
The power point presentations of this roundtable on ageing work force are available here.
The highlights of this roundtable on ageing work force are available here.
6. Final conference : Digital Upskilling for all – pathways for the digital upskilling and inclusion of the European Telecoms sector worforce
After two successful virtual events, ETNO and UNI Europa organised a final conference of the project Digital Upskilling For All! (DUFA) in Lisbon, Portugal, on 23-24 May 2022. This event was intended to consolidate the results from the project research and the previous round table discussions as well as to expand the debate on digital upskilling pathways for other diversities in the telecom/ICT sector. The steering group and our Partner Mercer have decided to highlight the ageing workforce paradox “with a growing older work population -no specific attention was given to the digital upskilling of the ageing workforce in the sector (panel discussion)”.
The conference included panel discussions, workshops on indicators and obstacles, brainstorming and networking to foster the understanding of our experts on Digital upskilling, diversity, and inclusion, and expanded the empowering women and older workers to access new ICT job opportunities by promoting equity for digital upskilling among other diversity groups: neurodiversity, disabilities, ethnicity, refugees, LGBTQIA+.
Video recordings:
- Opening and housekeeping rules – Grégory Gillet, ETNO
- Welcome by Lise Fuhr – ETNO
- Welcome by Altice CEO – Ana Figueiredo
- Welcome by UNI Europa ICTS– Manuel Gonçalves, Sinttav
- Skills for the digital transition - Diversity, inclusion and the contribution of social partners - Tim Van Rie, European Commission, DG EMPL
- Overview of the DUFA! Project and summary of the best practices from the two roundtables – Lucye Provera and Alessandro Cortesi, Mercer
- Digital upskilling for the ageing workforce – challenges, obstacles and solutions
- First Workshop: Diversity Digital upskilling Obstacles
- Second Workshop: Diversity Digital Upskilling KPIs
- Equity – Expansion of the digital upskilling best practices to other diversity groups (Disability & Neurodiversity, Ethnicity, LGTBQI+, Socio-Economic background & Refugees)
- Conclusions
All the presentations used during DUFA's Final Conference are available here.
More information about the event can be found here.
Testimonials:
- Rik Bleeke (CISCO)
- Alessandro Cortesi (Mercer)
- Ana Estelita (Fundação Altice Portugal)
7. Dissemination and Achievements
- The Project Summary in 18 EU languages is available here.
- A Final Press Release of the project is also available here, translations to other EU languages (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovakian and Swedish) are also available.
