Report on Social Challenges and Re-skilling Needs of the Workforce Solutions in the TRACER Target Regions

Radulov, Lulin and Nikolaev, Angel and Davies, Sara and Michie, Rona and den Hoed, Wilbert (2020) Report on Social Challenges and Re-skilling Needs of the Workforce Solutions in the TRACER Target Regions. TRACER, [Munich, Germany].

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Abstract

Over time, mankind has understood that change is always present in all areas of its life - from the internal environment of each person, to the external environment, and up to the macrocosmic level. What shocks, lately, are the dynamics / speed, complexity and magnitude of change; „Change that involves people is a transition according to Bridges, and people are the essence of any process of change.” (Mergner, Janssen, Mandic Lukic, 2020, p.10). The year 2020, marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has taken humanity "by surprise and unprepared" and which will cause a major transition on all levels of human life, will symbolize the "year of restart" or the beginning of a global reengineering process. Thus, in the complex issue of the transition from carbon-intensive areas in the context of the TRACER project appeared this new component - not negligible, which influences all forecasts, models and scenarios on social challenges and future skills needs of the TRACER target regions. The latest COVID-19 crisis has shaken many “certainties” we have had about labour market needs, job requirements and work environment. Many employers have faced decisions on human resources practices, such as: the opportunity to use remote teams; the replacement of formal meetings with various review substitutes; the empowerment of employees to exercise self-reflection in order to align their assignments to the new work constraints etc. One of the effects of this new context is that it has challenged organisational common places and routines, some of which have proven no longer useful, if in the nature of the case the organisation cannot any longer comply with one-on-one and face-toface interaction. While deprived of physical presence of teams and immediate managerial control, contemporary societies have shown the radical constructivist characteristics of some of their settings. In mining regions facing structural transitions one of the challenges to re-skilling is given by the relentless lingering of local actors to old ways of “doing things” (from managing communities to identifying labour market opportunities and needs). Maybe for such a time as this the various stakeholders of mining regions should show more versatility to innovative proposals that might have been out of sight a decade ago.

ORCID iDs

Radulov, Lulin, Nikolaev, Angel, Davies, Sara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3872-7630, Michie, Rona ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3886-589X and den Hoed, Wilbert ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1758-704X;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)