Companies’ Uphill Road to be HR-Ready for the Future of Work
According to the latest study report of the project Upskill 4 Future, most companies and their workforce are currently not fully ready to go through the digital and green transition.
The study builds upon the data collected via the CSR Europe HR Assessment Tool.
Next: Companies will create an action plan to implement pilots with vulnerable workers.
Most companies have yet to define a comprehensive HR strategy to overcome the challenges posed to their workforce by the green and digital transition. This is the conclusion of the study report “Company readiness for inclusive workforce transition” developed in the framework of the project Upskill 4 Future and building up from the HR performance assessment of 33 participating companies operating in 14 sectors in 4 countries across Europe.
The document highlights the HR readiness of companies for the whole workforce in general and for vulnerable workers with regards to 3 key HR processes: strategic workforce planning, training & development, flexibility & mobility.
Key findings
Vulnerable employees are still not at the core of HR strategies.
Companies’ business planning, training strategies, and flexibility and mobility schemes are often not targeting vulnerable employees. According to the results of the assessment, the average HR readiness score of project companies for the whole workforce, in general, is 3.4 out of 5 versus 1.4 for employees at risk.
Half of the participating companies are at risk of job losses in the short term.
While more than 10% of the companies have more than 50% of their workforce at risk, more than 50% of the companies face threats in a very short term (1 to 4 years), which means that urgent actions are needed.
Half of the participating companies accelerated re-skilling due to Covid-19.
The pandemic brought companies to rethink their corporate culture on continuous learning. Half of the companies had to reskill their employees to be able to perform during the Covid-19 crisis and 39% saw a new group of vulnerable workers emerge in their company as a response to the crisis.
Towards an inclusive workforce transition
HR function within companies is essential to embark on a path of inclusive workforce transition. Participating companies have been recommended, amongst others, to adopt a skills matrix to identify employees at risk and monitor skill gaps. This would contribute to increase transparency across departments, facilitate internal communication to employees, and setting the foundation for a formal upskilling strategy.
Sharing best practices via inter-company communication should also be explored to understand the different groups at risk and the upskilling initiatives they could benefit from.
For this reason, CSR Europe facilitated the High-Level Roundtable on Future of Work. On that occasion, experts in Human Resources recognised the importance of strong leadership to mainstream up- and re-skilling across all company functions and across the value chain. Experts advocated the adoption of a proactive future-enabling outlook on their workforce, instead of molding workers to simply be future-proof. Participants also recognised that leaders should contribute to moving forward with adult learning, as there is still untapped innovability, especially when it comes to both training and flexibility & mobility schemes.
CSR Europe’s call for collaboration between all actors in society is aligned with the European Pact for Skills and its call for greater individual involvement in upskilling initiatives.
Next Steps to Improve Companies’ HR-Readiness
Following up on recommendations drawn from the study report, companies that are part of the project Upskill 4 Future will now create an action plan to realise their pilots with vulnerable workers in 2021.
If you are interested in knowing more about CSR Europe’s HR Assessment Tool that was used to collect the data analysed in the study, please contact Andrea Bittnerova.