As part of a cycle of webinars on “Building back resilience” implemented in the framework of EBSOMED project and considering the important variables that BSOs should consider to renew their offered services and SMEs in rebuilding skills for their business continuity, BUSINESSMED, in cooperation with the Union for the Mediterranean, is organising the Online BSO Management Academy "The Upskilling Imperative: Vocational Training and the New Offer of BSOs’ Services" to be held on December 7, 2020.

Skills are key for sustainable competitiveness and resilience for Businesses. Today’s context makes it more urgent than ever for SMEs to get the right education and training to thrive and keep maintaining their position in the market and continue growing.

Businesses need workers with the skills required to master the challenges defined by the current transition. Skills are the answer to the need of companies to remain competitive. This requires providing access to additional up-skilling opportunities for economic operators across the Mediterranean.

The Covid-19 crisis has highlighted this importance of having the right skills for strategic sectors to perform. In particular, it has accentuated the need of digital skills in many aspects for business continuity.

According to the European Commission, a lot has been done in the Vocational Training (VT) sector but challenges are still ahead and Mediterranean countries should invest more in rebuilding skills. The immediate concern of Mediterranean countries today is rightfully how to overcome the immediate crisis. But decisions taken today can have long-term implications. To this end, BSOs need to ask themselves how VT systems can be improved through their services and ultimately emerge from this crisis even stronger, more responsive, and more resilient than before.

The Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) is actively working through consultations and initiatives such as Med4Jobs towards strengthening cooperation on VET sector in the Region. This cooperation has been strengthened when partnering with the European Training Foundation (ETF) towards strengthening cooperation between Higher Education and VT in the Mediterranean.

These interventions show furthermore that the need to improve and adapt skills becomes an imperative for SMEs to maintain their competitiveness and for BSOs to redefine their offered services. Providing support service that caters for the various dimensions of VET systems (e.g. apprenticeships, Centres of Vocational Excellence, continuing vocational education and training, quality assurance) becomes a sine qua non condition for business continuity.

The emergence of new business models and new forms of work organisation accelerated changes in the skills required by the labour market. These changes have been intensified by the challenges imposed by the Covid-19. The pandemic has impacted the Mediterranean economy with rapid technological developments, digitalization and transition to a resource-efficient, circular and climate-neutral economy. The economic recovery offers many opportunities to accelerate reforms in VET and strengthen its resilience. Companies need to put in place appropriate frameworks and measures to ensure that VET is resilient and can respond swiftly to changing labour market demands. 

The objectives of the webinar are:

• Discovering the upskilling imperative concept for BSOs and SMEs.
• Being part of the debate on building foundations for resilient Vocational Training systems to ensure business continuity.
• Exploring why better skills anticipation and tracking mechanisms are a sine qua non condition for SMEs to respond to the changes in Economic Sectors.
• Raising awareness on best practices to increase the digital readiness of SMEs through the VT sector and the role of BSOs in catering for VT content by including the digitalisation aspect.
• Highlighting the role of Employers in offering the workforce clear upskilling pathway.

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Registration is available via this link.