New Skills Fund, Aid and Awareness Raising to Revive Training

Lastly, the element on which the Fund has focused is the quality of training. On this front, first of all, a missing link was added, namely the measurement of the performance of training providers. If, in the entry phase, subjects must be accredited in at least one of the Italian regions, in the ex-post phase there was no operational tool to help the Fund assess the planning and management capacity of the training providers, in relation to the funding granted and reported, in order to highlight their reliability and skills, but also any downgrades relative to an individual implementer, which could constitute warning signals for the Fund. The study carried out enabled the board to adopt a rating model, the results of which are updated every two years and made public through the Fund's institutional website, for the benefit of companies. And in the area of quality, for years training plans have had to be designed for competences, applying the IVC (Identification, Validation and Certification) methodology, with the final achievement of digital attestation with blockchain methodology of the skills and knowledge acquired.

Moreover, For.Te. was the first Fund to equip itself with an organisation, management and control model in compliance with Legislative Decree 231 of 2001; a responsible choice made in 2012, when the Funds had not yet been qualified as public law bodies.

And on the subject of sustainability and ecological transition, For.Te., also in 2012, started and completed in a few years the transition from paper to digital storage. A tool that allowed the Fund to operate and guarantee services even during the pandemic.

What, on the other hand, are the challenges still to be overcome, also in the light of new technologies such as Ai?

We are exploring the advantages arising from the introduction of Ai, in relation to a part of the controls and to all the phases that presuppose the documentary examination of files, where this may make it possible to direct the Fund's human resources in the direction of valuable activities, such as technical assistance, and to significantly reduce the timeframes associated with the documentary verification activity. Also on the training tools front, a reflection has been underway for some time, which also involved the organisations during the two editions of the National Forum on Continuing Training created by the Fund, on the need to adopt advanced multimedia tools to be used in asynchronous distance learning. We have launched an initial experiment in this world, promoting a 'library' made up of multimedia training pills, which entities can access. We think that the future is there. After all, it is a lesson we have learnt from the Covid period. In a medium and long-term vision, technological products and tools help by responding to an increasing number of beneficiaries with insufficient resources and the need for continuous 'renewal' of skills. In perspective, this could also lead to a reduction in training costs. For our part, we can only act as a stimulus to the training organisations; it is, in fact, the technicians who choose, when they apply for a plan, the methodologies and methods most suitable for each type of course. But the funds, for their part, can also make an important contribution to raising awareness among training organisations and companies.

 Italy is below the EU average in terms of training; what are the main levers on which to focus in order to close the gap and come closer to the more virtuous countries such as Sweden?

On this issue it is necessary to consider that there are many elements, as well as the past history that penalises Italy, as already mentioned and for those who remember the experience of Law 236 of 1993, access to funding was experienced as a race towards the impossible. Moreover, in the comparison with other European countries, one should bear in mind the Italian entrepreneurial fabric, 95% of which is represented by micro-enterprises, realities with less than 10 employees, which very often struggle to approach training and need support. With reference to this specific case, moreover, the owner is very often directly and operationally involved in the company; not allowing funds to include the owner of the company among the training recipients, perhaps under special conditions, runs the risk of nullifying the effects and benefits, especially if a greater push towards innovation is required, as in this particular moment.

Since their inception, the funds have undoubtedly made a very important contribution to bringing companies and workers closer to the opportunities they offer and the benefits they bring, as can be seen from CEDEFOP data. Learning and updating cannot and must not be isolated moments in the life of each employee: they are continuous processes that must be cultivated to promote personal and corporate growth and innovation.

A major awareness-raising campaign promoted by the government would be needed to make people realise that continuous training does not only serve to increase skills, but also nurtures the culture of the individual and the company, helps the individual, the company and the country system to keep pace with changes in the market, technologies and the broader cultural and social context, and consequently ensures contractual capacity, competitiveness and contributes to increasing GDP.

In this context, the New Skills Fund can also help given its purpose, provided that the mechanisms that did not work are significantly corrected in the third edition. It is certain, in conclusion, that once companies enter the training circuit and achieve tangible results, they never leave it. The problem, therefore, is having the right approach.

As regards the New Skills Fund, from your point of view, is refinancing and reopening of this instrument expected soon? When and how?

The third edition is about to be launched. There has been an initial meeting with the funds and it is conceivable that it will see the light of day in the autumn. A thorough review of simplification is desirable, with reference to administrative, financial and procedural mechanisms. Often, the lack of response from the public manager has made it difficult for companies and the funds themselves to deal with them. Based on past experience, the feeling gained was of a process defined in a top-down, top-down logic. In the end, the balance on the second edition is made up of lights and shadows; at issue is not the strategy, the purpose or the specific objectives, all of which are appreciable, but precisely the technical mechanism, which needed a national direction of the activity carried out by the various operators, the funds, which could have ensured greater certainty and speed with regard to the companies.

We hope that this time the procedural mechanism will follow a bottom-up logic, and together, each for their respective competencies and responsibilities, we can build an arrangement that lives up to expectations. The intentions stated in the introduction are positive.

The latest labour data tell us of a strong mismatch of skills, just to give an example, Confcommercio data for the tourism sector indicate a shortage of 170,000 employees with specific skills. How, in your opinion, in the sectors where you are most present, can you help the matching of labour supply and demand?

As far as For.Te. is concerned, we register a very strong participation of tourism companies in the notices issued and in the financing granted. Without entering into reasoning that goes beyond training, from our point of view, it is necessary to insist on the strengthening of a virtuous circuit, which involves companies, workers and their respective representative systems, in essence the social partners, the skills coming out of training courses, and employment agencies. In this sense, it is now essential to ensure the traceability of learning, in terms of knowledge and skills acquired. Between training and the market there is, in fact, a sort of black hole that must be filled by encouraging the 'sharing', in a sort of repository, of competences, knowledge, formal, informal and non-formal skills in favour of labour supply and demand.

The employment data also show that female employment is still lagging behind; it can be said that, despite slight signs of improvement, roughly one in two women work and women lack a tool for freedom and independence such as financial education. What can be done?

For.Te., among the priorities indicated in the Notices, has always included gender equality, stimulating specific paths also addressed to financial education; also in this case the importance of learning as a conscious choice of freedom and autonomy must be stressed. We register a great interest and we also talked about it in the annual occasion promoted by Terziario Donna, "TDlab 2024", which dedicated a specific panel to the relationship between financial education and female empowerment. The commitment at all levels must be to stimulate the various actors and territories to take charge of this issue, to be more present when defining training needs. It is important to emphasise that gender equality constitutes Goal 5 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and that the NRP, in Mission 5, emphasises the importance of reducing inequalities, also allocating almost 10 billion for the development of social inclusion policies. And finally, we intend to pay more attention to and promote UNI/PDR 125:2022 certification, a management tool that allows organisations to assess their level of gender equality and to define internal policies from an inclusive and gender-equal perspective.

A number of benefits derive from certification, first of all reputational positioning, followed by tax relief, bonuses and concessions.