Automotive Skills Agenda Analysis & Strategy and Roadmap

Automotive Sector’s ongoing changes call for action from the whole automotive ecosystem, with the prime accountability on decision-makers’ strategic vision. This became clear with the European Commission’s setting-up of the High-Level Group GEAR2030, that provided recommendations on how the automotive industry could anticipate and prepare to adapt to trends, thus transforming treats into opportunities.

In view of the weight the automotive sector has on GDP across different EU member states, as well as the number of direct and indirect jobs and myriad SMEs in the value-chain, the sectoral blueprint framework became, at EU level, the operational arm to outline its most valuable asset - human capital.

Development and Research on Innovative Vocational Educational Skills (DRIVES), is the pilot project covering the Automotive Blueprint for Sectoral Cooperation on Skills. The aim of the project is to provide strategy and roadmap for Automotive Skills Agenda. It ensures its future development and adoption by key stakeholders, complementary to other strategies in the sector. It covers overall EU Automotive Sector, and its value-chain.

 

 

Automotive Skills Agenda Strategy & Roadmap

 

The DRIVES project sees this Strategy and Roadmap as a toolkit to be used by a wider set of stakeholders within the sector – particularly involving those categories that we see as actors of the actions here outlined. Based on this feedback, a third and final release is planned by the end of 2021. Nonetheless, as the sector is subject to continuous changes and developments, the DRIVES partnership recommends that this Strategy and Roadmap is periodically reviewed.

First release version (May 2020) available here.

Second release version (December 2020) available here.

Third release version (December 2021) available here.

 

Key Actions

 

 

 

Methodology

 

 

The approach to the sector of the DRIVES project relating to the skills agenda can be summarised into the following elements:

  • Key Areas of Skills Agenda - the work is based on eight key areas defined by the partnership. They serve as the main elements for a sectoral strategy on skills and have been analysed one by one to allow a deep evaluation of each characteristic and evaluate specific actions.

  • Automotive Skills Agenda Analysis - based on the defined key areas, the DRIVES project has carried out a Desk research and Surveys focused on Skills needs and Skills offer over last two years. They served as key inputs for the strategy: a funnel of information gathered by the desk-research activity, combined with direct engagement of stakeholders to support findings and recommendations included in the strategy and roadmap. European meetings were held with stakeholders to present previous outcomes and the main results and to collect first-hand feedback and opinions. The overall approach and key findings of the sectoral analysis are described in the documents below – Automotive Skills Agenda Analysis.

  • Automotive Skill Agenda Strategy - DRIVES is proposing an overall set of Base Objectives and Specific Objectives that serve as the basis for a sectoral agenda skills strategy. On that basis we are proposing Key Actions, with detailed Actions what should be done.

  • Automotive Skill Agenda Roadmap – takes into the account the Key Actions identified and puts them into the perspective of Stakeholders involved and Timing.

 

The stakeholders have been grouped as follows:

 
The methodology applied for the 1st RoadMap release has defined 8 Key Actions (KA) and 56 Specific Activities to be implemented by the wider automotive community as a strategic starting point to tackle the current and ongoing changes in the sector.
 
For the purpose of the 2nd RoadMap release, each Key Action was presented and discussed with several stakeholders of the sector to investigate their relevance and consistency and if any revisions of their strategic approach were necessary. 
 
Following this methodology, the objective of the 3rd and final RoadMap release was to enrich the roadmap with information and best practices that can help the wider automotive community translate the strategy outlined in the roadmap (1st and 2nd release) into a set of practical and operational actions for implementation. To do this, DRIVES Partnership engaged and involved stakeholders from regional automotive clusters, presenting four main topics during dedicated workshops. These covered: 
 
  • STANDARD DEFINITION 
  • FACILITATING ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN DIFFERENT STAKEHOLDERS
  • INTELLIGENCE
  • TRAINING PROGRAMMES
Such topics emerged from:
  • Analysis and research of best practices across the EU and a matching exercise between them and the 56 Specific Actions previously identified in the 1st release. The best practices were collected thanks to the support of WP5 – which has identified best practices already in place across the EU through the Good Practice Resource Tool;  
  • Analysis and research conducted within the work of the Automotive Skills Alliance (ASA). 

 

 

Automotive Skills Agenda Analysis - Results (Sectoral Intelligence)

 

 
 

 

 

 

The EC support for the production of this publication does not constitute endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.