Skills and training
‘Skill’ has various meanings. At the level of the individual, it means the person’s current level of competence or performance at a certain task; alternatively, it refers to a task a person can perform to a satisfactory level. The European Qualifications Framework (EQF) defines skills as the ability to apply knowledge and use know-how to complete tasks and solve problems. Skills can be described as cognitive (involving the use of logical, intuitive and creative thinking) or practical (involving manual dexterity and the use of methods, materials, tools and instruments). At national level, policymakers refer to the skill levels of a population; the level, type and numbers of qualifications are typically used as proxies for the skill level of a given population. Training is the process of enhancing employees’ skills, attitudes and knowledge so as to improve competence levels. Vocational training, including apprenticeships, may also constitute part of the publicly provided education system.
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European Working Conditions Survey 2024 – Highlights
This digital story presents the highlights from the European Working Conditions Survey 2024 overview report. It explores key findings from each chapter of the report focusing on the European workforce, workplace practices, measuring job quality, trends over time in job quality, as well as the quality of working life in the EU.European Working Conditions Survey 2024: Overview report
Now in its eighth edition, the European Working Conditions Survey 2024 maps changes in working life over more than three decades. This high-quality, probability-based survey covers 35 European countries, including the 27 EU Member States, Norway, Switzerland, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosovo and Serbia. Over 36,600 face-to-face interviews, each lasting approximately 45 minutes, took place as part of the survey.SME digitalisation in the EU: Trends, policies and impacts
This report discusses the digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the European Union, highlighting its importance for their competitiveness and the EU’s economy. The report explores the degree of digitalisation in SMEs in the EU, including the adoption of digital technologies, e-commerce and e-business practices.Achieving an appropriate match between skills and tasks, as well as creating opportunities for developing skills and competences are important dimensions of quality of work and employment. Skills are the passport to employment; the better skilled an individual, the more employable they are. Employability is a combination of factors, such as job-specific skills and transversal skills, which enable individuals to enter into employment, stay in employment and advance in their careers.
Eurofound provides extensive knowledge about skills in the European workplace, including information on training, work organisation and job design, job quality and skills mismatches. Skills and training needs are also featuring in research on the digital age and platform work.
Sustained labour market participation is supported by the first key principle of the European Pillar of Social Rights which outlines the importance of maintaining and acquiring skills to ensure ‘equal opportunities and access to the labour market’. It states that everyone has the right to ‘quality and inclusive education, training and lifelong learning in order to maintain and acquire skills that enable them to participate fully in society and manage successfully transitions in the labour market’. As further outlined in the European Green Deal, reskilling and upskilling will enhance employability in the green economy via measures such as the Skills Agenda and Youth Guarantee.
The European Commission adopted the first Skills Agenda for Europe in June 2016, designed to make the right training, skills and support available to people in the EU. Building on this, on 1 July 2020 the Commission adopted the new European Skills Agenda for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience. Its 12 actions focus on objectives for improving existing skills and training in new skills, outlining targets to be reached by 2025. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the crucial role of digital skills and competencies in ensuring business continuity, as well as in providing education and training remotely. The Commission is now placing skills at the heart of the EU policy agenda to help achieve a sustainable recovery from the impact of COVID-19.
The Commission has dedicated 2023 as the European Year of Skills, aiming to raise awareness around skills and the need to improve and develop skills to address skills shortages, while also helping people to get the right skills for good quality jobs through reskilling and upskilling.
This supports the EU initiatives already underway to support skills and training. On 1 July 2020, the Commission launched the Youth Employment Support package which is structured around four strands that will provide a bridge to jobs for the next generation. The Commission’s proposal for a Council Recommendation on a ‘Bridge to jobs’ reinforces the Youth Guarantee launched in 2013. This initiative links in with the needs of companies to provide the skills needed, particularly for the green and digital transitions, alongside developing transversal skills, such as entrepreneurial and career management skills. The package also includes a proposal on vocational education and training, a renewed impetus for apprenticeships and additional measures to support youth employment.
On 8 June 2020, the Council of the European Union adopted conclusions on reskilling and upskilling as a basis for increasing sustainability and employability, in the context of supporting economic recovery and social cohesion.
The Commission, along with EU Agency Cedefop, launched the EU Skills Panorama website in 2012 to present information on short- and medium-term skills needs, skills supply and skills mismatches in the EU. It aimed to improve the EU’s capacity to assess and anticipate skill needs to make education and training systems more responsive to labour market needs and to better match skill supply and demand. Cedefop is currently responsible for producing EU skills intelligence.
European Commission: The European Pillar of Social Rights in 20 principlesopens in new tab
European Commission: European Year of Skills 2023opens in new tab
European Commission: Skills Agenda for Europeopens in new tab
Council of the European Union: Council conclusions on reskilling and upskilling as a basis for increasing sustainability and employabilityPDFopens in new tab
European Commission: Commission launches Youth Employment Support: a bridge to jobs for the next generationopens in new tab
Cedefop: Skills intelligenceopens in new tab
This is a selection of the most important outputs for this topic.
10 September 2024
Company practices to tackle labour shortages
This report provides updated evidence on the persistence of labour shortages amid declining levels of labour market slack in the EU and at Member State level. This serves as a background to the main focus of the report, which is on organisational policies aimed at attracting workers to occupations in which shortages are common. Case studies were conducted across sectors and Member States to gain an insight into how organisations deal with recruitment and retention challenges in a tight labour market. The report offers lessons on steps employers can take to fill vacancies, whether acting alone or in partnership with other organisations. It builds on previous Eurofound research that developed a taxonomy of actions employers adopt aimed at addressing labour shortages.
30 March 2023
Fostering skills use for sustained business performance: Evidence from the European Company Survey
Human resources contribute to the success of an organisation though their skills. According to the ability, motivation, opportunity (AMO) model, employee contributions to organisational performance depend on their skills, their motivation to draw on their skills, and the opportunities to do so. Organisations can adopt managerial approaches cultivating ability (A) by facilitating learning, creating opportunity (O) by providing employees with autonomy, and encouraging motivation (M) by leveraging monetary and non-monetary motivational drivers.
This report is based on the 2019 European Company Survey (ECS 2019). It shows that managerial approaches cultivating AMO are positively linked to establishment performance, and that these approaches are driven by an organisational culture that values employees as an asset to the organisation. People-centred managerial approaches that harness workplace wellbeing are central to the mechanism linking human capital utilisation to business outcomes.
27 March 2023
Measures to tackle labour shortages: Lessons for future policy
As economies begin to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, labour shortages are becoming increasingly evident despite the impact of the war in Ukraine on energy and commodity prices. These include shortages exacerbated by the crisis in some sectors and professions where they had been endemic for some time. This report looks at measures implemented at national level to tackle labour shortages in the health, care, and information and communication technology sectors, as well as those arising from the twin green and digital transition. It assesses what measures are effective and explores the contextual factors supporting or hindering effective policy implementation and outcomes.
29 November 2022
Working conditions in the time of COVID-19: Implications for the future
The strict public health restrictions implemented by governments in 2020 to control the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly changed working life and continued to shape it over the two years that followed. Between March and November 2021, over 70,000 interviews were carried out in 36 countries by the European Working Conditions Telephone Survey (EWCTS), a high-quality probability-based survey. The aim was to provide a detailed picture of the working lives of Europeans in that exceptional time.
The report documents the working conditions of Europeans in 2021. It examines variation in job quality and identifies its positive association with well-being, health, work engagement and the financial sustainability of work. It highlights the divergences in the experiences of workers depending on workers’ own attributes and their place in the workforce. From this analysis, the report aims to derive lessons for the future, particularly in relation to the enduring marks on how we work and the implications for work organisation, the quality of work, and the interaction between work and private life.
20 July 2021
Tackling labour shortages in EU Member States
While unemployment is still a huge challenge in Europe, some countries, sectors and occupations are experiencing labour shortages. This report explores various approaches to identifying labour shortages and maps national policy debates around the issue. It documents public and social partner interventions to tackle labour shortages, such as measures fostering geographical or occupational mobility, addressing skills shortages and underinvestment in skills, improving working and employment conditions, and providing better matching procedures.
30 June 2021
Innovation in EU companies: Do workplace practices matter?
The EU has long supported innovation in business and in workplaces. The challenges facing Europe as it emerges from the COVID-19 crisis make the need for innovation more urgent. The NextGenerationEU recovery package requires a reorientation of business activities towards innovation for resilience. Looking to the longer term, policies such as the European Industrial Strategy aim to support the transition to a green and digital economy.
Against this background, this policy brief investigates the workplace practices of innovative companies and examines the evidence linking them with innovation. These practices aim to encourage employees to work and problem-solve independently, to develop their skills, to include them in organisational decision-making, to motivate them to surpass their job description and to reward them for doing so. Analysis of these workplace practices can improve understanding of how they contribute to increasing the innovation potential of companies. It also provides an evidence base to support the work of policymakers and practitioners.
12 October 2020
European Company Survey 2019 - Workplace practices unlocking employee potential
This report is based on the fourth edition of the European Company Survey (ECS), which was carried out jointly by Eurofound and Cedefop in 2019. It describes a wide range of practices and strategies implemented by European companies in terms of work organisation, human resource management, skills use and skills development, and employee voice. The report shows how these practices are combined and how the resulting ‘bundles of practices’ are associated with two outcomes beneficial to employees and employers: workplace well-being and establishment performance.
The analysis finds that the establishments that are most likely to generate this win–win outcome are those that combine a high degree of worker autonomy, a balanced motivational strategy, a comprehensive training and learning strategy, and high levels of direct employee involvement in decision-making, as well as offering managerial support for these practices. To boost the adoption of employee-oriented practices – particularly in relation to autonomy, skills and employee involvement – managers should be offered appropriate support, as they play a key role in the decision to initiate workplace change. They are also crucial to its success, as they must continuously support the workplace practices implemented.
Researchers at Eurofound provide expert insights and can be contacted for questions or media requests.
Gijs van Houten
Senior research managerGijs van Houten is a senior research manager in the Employment unit at Eurofound. He has specific expertise in cross-national survey methodology and the analysis of workplace practices and organisational strategies. He currently leads the preparations for the European Company Survey 2028, is in charge of methodology for the European Quality of Life Survey 2026, and is analysing the online data collected as part of the European Working Conditions Survey 2024, which will inform decision making on the future of surveys in Eurofound. Before joining Eurofound in 2010, he worked at the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP). Gijs spent a year away in 2016, working at the Pew Research Center in Washington, DC. He holds a Masters in Sociology from Radboud University Nijmegen and a PhD in Social Science from Utrecht University.
Tina Weber
Senior research managerTina Weber is a senior research manager in Eurofound’s Working Life unit. Her work has focused on labour shortages, the impact of hybrid work and an ‘always on’ culture and the right to disconnect, working conditions and social protection measures for self-employed workers and the impact of the twin transitions on employment, working conditions and industrial relations. She is responsible for studies assessing the representativeness of European social partner organisations. She has also carried out research on European Works Councils and the evolution of industrial relations and social dialogue in the European Union. Prior to joining Eurofound in 2019, she worked for a private research institute primarily carrying out impact assessments and evaluations of EU labour law and labour market policies. Tina holds a PhD in Political Sciences from the University of Edinburgh which focussed on the role of national trade unions and employers’ organisations in the European social dialogue.
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