Problem addressed
Technological and social evolution mean that the content and skills requirements of almost every job evolve frequently. This represents a challenge in Belgium, where opportunities for workers to develop new skills are rather limited. In Ghent, many workers are active in industries connected with the port of Ghent, where important changes will see significant numbers of low-skilled administrative jobs disappear in a short period. Lifelong learning, upskilling and reskilling are thus extremely relevant and should be a priority for every working person.
Innovative solution
House of Skills is a pilot service that encourages employees to proactively acquire the new skills that will equip them for transitions in the labour market (e.g. introduction of new technologies, digitalisation, green transition). House of Skills is innovative in that it combines existing stand-alone services and offers them as part of an integrated process.
House of Skills combines career guidance linked to the evolution of the labour market with modular training, which offers a high degree of flexibility for workers. Workers engage in tailored training, starting at their own level and learning at their own pace, through a blended learning approach.
The first step of the service is to establish a contact with the company, in order to get an overview of the current state, its ambitions and plans for the future in order to identify its skills needs. Organisational and personal goals are then matched in order to make workers sustainably employable. In the House of Skills pilot, the service is tested only with two companies (i.e. Volvo Car Ghent and Europabank). The plans for scaling up the project include offering the service to different client segment, including all working-age citizens in Ghent.
House of Skills uses as a theoretical framework the Self-Determination Theory[1], a macro-theory of human motivation focusing on the motivations behind people’s choices, i.e. people are motivated to grow and change by the need for competence, connection, and autonomy.
The service was inspired by the House of Skills project in Amsterdam, and adapted to the Belgian labour market.
The project does not develop a completely new service, but rather links all the individual services that exists in the City of Ghent in one chaim, combining career guidance, linked to the evolution of the labour market, and modular training. For this reason, the project is carried out by a diverse which ensures the involvement of relevant actors with an interest in the development of ‘future-proof’ skills for workers, such as the Department of Employment of the City of Ghent, two private companies (i.e. Volvo Car Ghent and Europabank), non-profit associations focussing on social integrations and career counselling, and the public employment service of Flanders.
The main mission of the City of Ghent’s Department of Employment is to offer solutions to the needs and challenges in the field of employment, with specific attention for those in vulnerable positions and for Ghent’s companies. These solutions are developed through partnerships. For this reason the City of Ghent is promoting and coordinating the pilot project. Samen Leven vzw (“Living together”) aims at promoting social integration and cultural/socioeconomic participation of various target groups, including young people, women, employees, unemployed, immigrants, seniors, disadvantaged, welfare recipients, asylum seekers. To achieve this, the organisation participates in the implementation of initiatives that directly or indirectly contribute to the social integration of these groups. Samen Leven vzw has extensive experience in implementing and monitoring projects on social and sustainable issues and will focus on the workers’ inputs to the project.
Other partners include: the Career advice and labour market centre (Loopbaanadvies en arbeidsmarktcentrum – LAC), a non-profit association focusing on empowering jobseekers, inactive people and employees (both individually and collectively), which provides career advice and deploys experienced career counsellors in the project; the public employment service of Flanders (Vlaamse Dienst voor Arbeidsbemiddeling en Beroepsopleiding – VDAB), whose mission is to ensure a balanced labour market, with a view to lifelong learning and a sustainable integration into the labour market of both jobseekers and employees. VDAB has an extensive (on- and offline) training offer for both jobseekers and employees. Based on this expertise, the organisation is responsible for developing modular and labour market-oriented training in the context of the pilot project; the Artevelde University in Ghent supports the design of the programme, ensuring the compliance with the basic principles of design thinking (i.e. understanding, observing, defining, ideating, prototyping, testing, learning and improving) and guide the testing and adjustment of the service. The Artevelde University is also responsible for measuring the impact of the services, preparing the interim and final report.
[1] The Self-Determination Theory was formally introduced as a sound empirical theory in the mid-1980s by Edward L. Deci and Richard Ryan in the book ‘titled "Self-Determination and Intrinsic Motivation in Human Behaviour".
Key results and benefits
House of Skills is currently piloted with two companies in Ghent: Europabank and Volvo Car. Each year, 15 individuals per company are involved, on average. The impact on employers and employees will be measured by Artevelde University following a process-tracing for impact evaluation, a qualitative analysis methodology focusing on the various links in the process and establishing the causality between them, in order to obtain a full picture of the impact of the project.
The evaluation is ongoing and will be completed by August 2022.
According to the feedback coming from a close follow-up of three cases per organisations, (in Europabank and Volvo Car Ghent), employees are satisfied with the service and have the impression that their employers are prioritising their development. They are learning to reflect on their skills and the gaps they need to fill in order to have a sustainable job in a rapidly evolving company. They also feel empowered to take responsibility for their own career. The neutrality of the career counselling is considered by employees as a particularly positive element, as it encourages them to be more honest about their wishes and needs.
Early results also indicate the important role of workers’ direct supervisors in access to training and in the growth and development of new skills. This reinforces the concept of the positive impact of providing an external service which provides an easy and direct access to upskilling or reskilling for employees.
‘[House of Skills] helped me to learn about my own skills, to develop myself and to reflect on my daily activities at the bank. Now I know what my qualities are and what I can offer Europabank, as well as what Europabank can offer me.’
Potential for mainstreaming
The project could be implemented at a larger scale, for instance in all companies active in Ghent. It could also be adapted to respond to the needs of individual employees (independently of their company) or for jobseekers, who could benefit from learning about changes on the labour market, as well as the skills they will need to develop in order to be better prepared for the future.
As different types of services are involved, it is important to appoint a central coordinator within the City of Ghent.
Career counsellors also need support (e.g. training, regular updates on skills needed) if they are to remain abreast of labour market evolutions and guide employees appropriately.
