Industry Alliance to Combat Digital Illiteracy in Europe
The European Commission has given its backing to a new alliance of leading businesses that are seeking to increase investment in the IT skills of the European workforce. The e-Skills Leadership Board will cooperate closely with the European Commission to ensure that every European has the opportunity to acquire the basic skills needed in today’s labour market.
The Board has agreed to focus on the following four objectives:
• Inspiring e-skills learning in future generations
• Promoting IT practitioner education, competencies and training
• Boosting the employability of the workforce with IT user skills, including the deployment of multi-stakeholder partnerships
• Providing foresight and support for future skills needed in a changing environment with emerging technologies and new business models
Founding members of the Leadership Board include Global Knowledge EMEA, Cisco, ECDL Foundation, ECONET, EITO, EXIN, HP, INLEA Foundation, Oracle, Microsoft, Pearson, Prometric and Siemens Enterprise Communications.
“We are delighted to be a member of the e-Skills Leadership Board. Its members are the right mix of academia, IT industry and government bodies; and are the stakeholders in providing a solution to one of Europe’s critical economic challenges,” said EMEA President, Richard Pryor-Jones.
The CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development) released a report in June that highlighted the difficulties that UK businesses are experiencing in retaining staff. 78 per cent of companies suffered retention difficulties in 2006, compared to 69 per cent in 2005.
The report named popular initiatives that can prove successful in holding on to employees. These initiatives include recruiting from overseas, targeting migrant workers and offering flexible work and training conditions to existing staff.
However, the survey also found that, whilst 74 per cent of respondents said that flexible working had a positive impact, only 30 per cent use this initiative. Similarly, 75 per cent agreed that targeting migrant workers from EU countries was a positive step, yet only 14 per cent actively do this.
Author of the report, CIPD research associate, Nicola Monson, said: “Employers will continue to struggle to find suitable candidates and keep staff turnover under control if their approach to recruitment and retention fails to take account of both business and employee needs.”
She added that employers must take a proactive approach to talent management and tap into the skills of the people wanting to contribute and
progress. “Actively developing employees should not only increase the internal talent pool, in turn reducing their reliance on external candidates, but also see problems of retaining staff ease due to new career opportunities.”
