Talent4LIFE – Talent management for staff retention processes in European business to tackle the challenges of the future of work Erasmus Project

Project Title

Talent4LIFE – Talent management for staff retention processes in European business to tackle the challenges of the future of work

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Social dialogue; Cooperation between educational institutions and business; Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal)

Project Summary

The Talent4LIFE Project is established in front of two core megatrends which are hitting the European economy and European SMEs in particular – demographic developmemt and digitalisation. For SMEs in Europe these are crucial risks for their survivial since there is the need to employ workers who are able to apply digital skills in practically every economic sector, however, it falls extremely difficult to find talented younger employees within Europe. The “war for talents” has already started and in front of the very obvious demographic challenge with an constantly ageing workforce, the identification and hiring of new young talents is no longer the option or solution. The only solution to tackle this situation is the approach of staff retention through active talent management and development within the company. Moreover with companies we can also clearly see that workers from 45+ experience quite some changes in their whole life environment which has considerable impact on their work motivation, added values and talents. This group of workers has finished their family planning, have all established their lifes with living, housing, leisure, health, interests, work-life-balance and within the companies we can also see that they have managed to grow and develop, got more responsibility, senior jobs, better payment etc. but around this age their growth has somehow slowed down or stopped, they are already supervisors, line managers, foreworkers etc. and there is actually no real or hardly any development perspective anymore within the company. Especially in SMEs there is in fact not much to offer for the best talents who are at their peak of corporate development. If businesses (and SMEs especially because of more limited possibilities) are not able to make an appropriate offer to this target group of workers the consequences are really fatal. Out of this reason SMEs, their staff and managers, HR responsibles, line managers etc. need support with a modern talent management based staff retention approach which is in fact the only solution to manage the change triggered by demographic developments and digitalisation.

The main aim of the project is the development of a model (including instruments) for talent management based staff retention for European businesses (especially SMEs) to be able to manage the challenges of the future of work together with the challenges of the demographic development and the all time war for talents.

During its lifetime the Talent4LIFE project is going to develop four core intellectual outputs:
IO1: Explorative research study: To be able to fully understand and grasp the challenges and frame conditions of the target group (personal needs, talent scopes, challenges and fears etc.) as well as the situations of European businesses and companies on the level of staff retention and adaptation to change and digitalisation / automatisation, a brief explorative research study will be launched
IO2: Talent4LIFE Model: This model defines the processes and instruments used for talent identification and management for staff retention and development processes in companies for the target group 45+. The model should be a hands on practical collection of instruments to be able to approach the target group, guide them through a talent identification and management process and elaborate a development and training plan which is developed as IO3 of the project.
IO3: Talent4LIFE Development Plan: the findings of the talent management and identification process together with the agreements of future developments, in fact the whole offer that the company is making to the single worker 45+ will be stipulated in a dedicated development plan which has its core function to draw the whole way and process for re-orientation, education and training, mentoring and monitoring of this development process.
IO4: Green Paper for Sustainability and Policy Integration: To achieve a best possible sustainability of the project and its outputs it is crucially important to embed the project and especially the findings and outcomes into policy discussions and a whole canon of activities around the future of work discussion, the adaptation needs of businesses and requirements / challenges of modern HR in terms of staff retention and talent management. For this reason the partnership will develop a green paper.

The partnership of the project consists of 7 organisations (social partners, training centres, consulting organisations, start ups and SMEs) from 6 European countries (AT, DE, IE, ES, HU and CY). Direct impact will be realised on about 700 SMEs in the partner countries during the course of the project. All project outputs will be made available as open educational resource in all partner languages for further use on a comprehensive dissemination and exploitation strategy.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 255689 Eur

Project Coordinator

WIRTSCHAFTSKAMMER STEIERMARK & Country: AT

Project Partners

• FEDERACION VIZCAINA DE EMPRESAS DEL METAL
• IHK- PROJEKTGESELLSCHAFT MBH
• brainplus GmbH
• FUTURE IN PERSPECTIVE LIMITED
• S.E.A.L CYPRUS (CYPRUS ORGANIZATION FOR SUSTAINABLE EDUCATION AND ACTIVE LEARNING)
• Start Fejleszto Alapitvany