Skills that matter for workers in Industry 5.0 – a skills transformation ecosystem approach (SKILL-UP)

A woman working in the industry with modern techonology.

The European vision Industry 5.0 has been formulated to reconcile the present rapid development of industrial technology with a humanistic approach, propelled by a worker-centred approach on learning towards a sustainable working life. 

The purpose of the project SKILL-UP is to investigate future skills for Industry 5.0, focusing on workers’ jobs and future skills, and on actions undertaken in the Swedish manufacturing industry and by stakeholders that provide vocational education. A central concept in the project is skills transformation ecosystem emphasising that workplace learning, in-house training and vocational education must be interconnected.

SKILL-UP uses an interactive research approach and we develop knowledge together with industrial companies and vocational education stakeholders. The Swedish National Agency for Higher Vocational Education is an important partner in identifying providers of vocational education and developing an ecosystem for skills transformation. A mix of data collection methods is used: questionnaires to industrial companies and vocational education providers; case studies in companies that include interviews with managers and workers; as well as workshops with key actors within companies and vocational education providers for co-creation and investigate how challenges are handled to develop skills for the future.

SKILL-UP contributes knowledge about future skills transformation from the perspective of industrial workers, companies and vocational education providers. We use an ecosystem approach to perform multidimensional analyses of skills transformation needed to restructure production processes and tasks in industrial companies to become more worker-centric in the transition to I5.0. The ambition is to develop an ecosystem model for skills transformation where we can identify important actors, interactions, activities and conditions for skills transformation towards I5.0.

Funding

FORTE 2023–2025

Contact

Organisation