The issue of attracting and retaining skilled workforce in regions renowned in the past by their well-trained workers, established knowledge and strong social capital, that are now struggling with shortage of skilled workforce, is amongst the major challenges for EU.
Regions in industrial growth have a comparatively strong potential to seize the chances offered by current megatrends for economic prosperity, but face challenges mainly related to the workforce - lack of appropriate skill base for future-oriented occupations, low levels of productivity, lack of digital or technology literacy, lack of workers for some industries or the newly emerged green jobs. In many of these regions the trends are related to local population aging, depopulation, migration towards more attractive regions and low birth rate.
To foster “high-road competitiveness” strategies the regions need to improve their ability to nurture innovation-led growth based on attracting and retaining skilled workforce. This ability is manifold, as the workforce attraction and retaining depends on ensuring a complex of favourable conditions–urban, economic, academic and social. The complexity is also the reason that different policies and programmes are to be tackled.
The project gathers partners from 6 regions accross EU with similar challenges that need to attract and retain new motors of growth - the skilled workforce.
7 different organisations - regional, local, national - a governmental institution, 2 regional administrations, 1 regional industrial alliance, 1 municipality, 1 confederation of SME's, 1 NGO - that as actors are important elements of the workforce ecosystem in every region and can maximise the potential of the regions, federate expertise and efforts in the project.
They aim to improve policies and programmes for encouraging the attraction and retention of skilled workforce to harness and benefit from the opportunities of the green and digital transition in a socially fair and just mode.