Workplace Inclusion 4.0 Erasmus Project

Project Title

Workplace Inclusion 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 vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Disabilities – special needs; Gender equality / equal opportunities

Project Summary

Accessibility is still recognized as an annoying and costly duty but not as an opportunity. The legal position is clear – all public services and goods must be barrier-free (European Unions charter of fundamental rights and UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities CRPD). Accessibility concerns approximately 15% of the population with an increasing tendency in aging societies. However, awareness about the four major disability types and their different requirements is largely lacking and understanding of barrier-free adaptations is not available despite standards.

In addition to the socioeconomic importance, the importance and basic requirements of vulnerable groups facing barriers – as a growing group of clients – cannot be ignored (World Bank Group: World report on disability, Online 15.12.2014: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2011/ 01/14440066 / world-report-disability). In fact, if the market of the future is the “Silver Market”, accessibility is the foundation for participation and success.

The main focus of this project is to improve the work place situation of people with disabilities and to enable a better integration at their work places. Specific objectives to reach this were:
1) Study of the current status of workplace inclusion in different regions of Europe
2) Collection of best-practice examples from different regions
3) Preparation of teaching and learning materials for the WI4.0 training
4) Test course conducted in all five partner countries with achieving a certification
5) Evaluation of testing phase and improvement of the WI4.0 training
The participants of the training used their opportunity and strengthened their own profile and expand their business activities with the offer for the improvement of workplace inclusion.

Overall the project involves the following group of participants: More than 100 000 received information about the project through different channels like newsletters, reports in media, websites and social media activities. Another 600 people of different organizations were approached in online surveys and interviews. And 76 participants took part in the test training and 27 received the international standard certificate (ISO 17024) for persons. The profile of the test training participant slightly varies from partner by partner depending on their national situations. The main target group were business consultants and people in HR, but also guidance counselors in universities.

The main project activities were related to the Intellectual Outputs O1 to O3 as planned: The study about the current situation consisting of Online survey, interviews, other data sources and a literature research helped to improve our training specification with the requirements of customers, primarily addressing the customers of our training participant group. The preparing of the certificate-process and EQF-requirements was done in parallel. The development phase of the training materials with peer reviews has to consider the results of O1. The test phase of the training and the certification of the first participants ended with a feedback loop and an improved version of the training materials.

The pm methodology according to IPMA was used in carrying out the project and proved to be feasible and efficient.

The results and the impacts of the project match the plans and even exceed the expectations of the proposal stage:
1) a holistic training, which enables the participants ie business consultants and HR manager to improve the situation for people with disabilities at their workplace,
2) the training is also valuable for people with disabilities who , as “experts on their own cause”, seek new job opportunities.
3) lot of people got informed about the lacking implementation and this raise their awareness for this issue
4) 76 participants were trained in the test training
5) an extended business case for the participants of the testing phase is available
6) a certificate conforming to an international standard (ISO 17024) for persons is now available and supported by FH JOANNEUM in cooperation with SystemCert
7) the training corresponds to the national EQF-implementations

As social inclusion is not limited to the partner nations, the results can improve the situation across the whole European Union for people with disabilities.

The training will continue to be offered by the partners and the training materials will be available for self-study via the website. Also the certification can be completed by other individuals. The know-how of the participants and the sharpened awareness of the informed people will be a good basis for the further development of this topic. Dissemination activities of the project supported this objective.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 285530,07 Eur

Project Coordinator

FH JOANNEUM GESELLSCHAFT MBH & Country: AT

Project Partners

• K MILIOS AND SIA OE
• HAAGA-HELIA AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU OY
• EURORESO
• Fondazione Fenice Onlus
• YASAR UNIVERSITESI
• DI Tolliner Klaus