Rebooting, Re-rooting and Re-skilling Unemployed and Underemployed Higher Education Graduates for Work 4.0 Erasmus Project

Project Title

Rebooting, Re-rooting and Re-skilling Unemployed and Underemployed Higher Education Graduates for Work 4.0

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Open and distance learning; Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment

Project Summary

Unemployment and underemployment among higher education (HE) graduates, fragmented work careers and employment have increased in the EU during the past decade. Poorer employment opportunities increase their difficulties to return to work, and drive them to fragmented and short-term employments, low-skilled jobs, emigration and brain-drain. Absence from graduate work causes lack of work experience, skill mismatch and loss of taught skills. Focusing on hard skills is not enough to boost employability of HE graduates as the changes in work life, such as unpredictability, fragmentation and fluidity of future work and digitalisation replacing people, and the new requirements for non-cognitive skills and competencies of Work 4.0 create further situations and challenges. There is currently a gap between what employers want and what higher education graduates offer to them.

The Reboot project addressed this challenge by developing training for unemployed and underemployed higher education graduates which focuses on upskilling and developing relevant and high-quality sector-agnostic soft skills and competencies for Work 4.0, their ability to recognise and showcase these skills to potential employers using, for instance, portfolios, to productising own skills, soft skills and experiences, and in increasing career and skills flexibility of the unemployed and underemployed HE graduates and hence their change readiness and sense of empowerment over own career. Reboot self-test on soft skills helps to measure the level of understanding and mastering of soft skills at the beginning and end of the training, firstly to measure the level and hence obtaining guidelines for the training focus, and secondly to measure own development during the training.

Reboot training is formed of six modules and 22 soft skills:
– M0. Introduction to soft skills
– M1. About Me-How I Work
– M2. Context-How We Work
– M3. Into Action-Get to Work!
– M4. Career and skills flexibility
– M5. Portfolio creation

Reboot training is online non-formal training which can be delivered also as blended or online trainer-led activity or as self-learning independent of time and place. Hence the secondary target group is HEI and career counsellors, C-VET and unemployment training organisers, unemployment offices, HEI professors and teachers, key-actors in HRM and employment areas., i.e. employment trainers and facilitators, who can implement training.
Reboot handbooks for higher education graduates and trainers support implementing Reboot training. The training is suitable to all unemployed and underemployed HE graduates regardless the sector, level of work experience or nationality. The training was developed by four partners coming from countries with different employment realities, Belgium, Finland, Greece and the UK which supports the Pan-European adaptability.

The development of the training, self-test and the handbooks benefits from the research and the Validation of Reboot Competency Clusters for Work 4.0. All the training materials, the research report and handbook and syllabus are freely available on the Reboot Online Training platform at http://reboot-project.eu/ in respective content and language sections.

The Reboot training was piloted with 51 underemployed and unemployed higher education graduated and 14 trainers and facilitators (target group 2) combined of national participants. The feedback from the participants was positive. The training satisfied the need and concern of most participants about soft-skill development: module 1 – 86,6%, Module 2 – 87,2% Module 3 – 92,2%, and career and skills flexibility 90,1% satisfaction. The trainers were especially happy with the self-test and the materials. The learners also reported that training was found a new method to look at and showcase own skills. They discovered new things about themselves and gained self-confidence and sense of empowerment.
The project involved target groups and stakeholders actively in other activities as well, such as concept testing, hence involving directly 694 people: 376 un/underemployed HE graduates, 175 trainers and facilitators, 130 representatives of work life and 13 stakeholders.
Through dissemination activities the project reached circa 46.000 people.

ENVISAGED IMPACT AND LONG-TERM BENEFITS
Based on the positive outcomes, it can be concluded that the Reboot training is useful for increasing detecting, mastering and showcasing of Work 4.0 oriented soft skills and competences, productisation own skills and for career and skills flexibility, and hence empowerment over one’s career, and hence has potential to increase their employability potential. It also provides cutting-edge training material to support unemployed and underemployed HE graduates in this process.
As the materials are freely available online, in the future, more unemployed and underemployed higher education graduates are expected to receive help for their employability.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 202200 Eur

Project Coordinator

OY VAASAN AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU – VASAYRKESHOGSKOLA AB & Country: FI

Project Partners

• INOVA CONSULTANCY LTD
• CONEXX – EUROPE ASBL
• MILITOS SYMVOULEUTIKI A.E.