Italian Focus group on mapping skills needs

On Wednesday 24th of May 20223 a Focus group in the framework of Mosaic project took place with 6 Italian craft companies. 

The Focus group, which was moderated by Stefano Lenzi (Unioncamere Emilia-Romagna) and Becky Riches (Materahub) aimed at having a direct feedback from business actors on skills gaps, sustainability and social inclusion, as well as at outlining the state of play concerning some relevant topics to develop excellence in VET, with a specific reference to Craft SMEs. 

The six companies – an artistic craft studio, an artisanal publishing company, two restoration companies, a printing company, a free-lance ceramics artist – had the chance to discuss and reflect about topics related to 6 questions:

 – What does the word « competences » mean to you and your company ?

 – In a world which is constantly changing, in what way are you making those competences evolve? Could you describe one in particular ? 

– What is the share of informal education skills and competences coming from implicit knowledge that you need inside your business ?

 – Among 6 themes (sustainability, social inclusion , digitalization, research & development, new business models) which induce specific needs of competences; which ones seem most important for the future ? 

– Imagine your company in 5 years; are you capable of anticipating the difficulties to come and the competences to implement to face those difficulties? 

– By looking at those themes, is there a domain where the competences seems to you more difficult to put together ? And what are those difficulties ? 

The exchange of views on these topics revealed various interesting and significant common opinions, some of which can be summarized as follows:

 -a skill that will be increasingly required competence must run together with the word passion;

 – Digitalisation and Communication skills related to social media are of capital importance;

 – learning on the job and “soft skills” are also fundamental; 

– social inclusion is the hardest skill to acquire

The focus group lasted about 2 hours