Hosted by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) in Brussels on June 25th, the Goldenworkers project has organised a dissemination workshop aimed at advancing on a state-of-the-art research agenda for ICT and employment, fully embraced by research and practice communities, and at presenting the state of the art and at calling for inputs regarding the upcoming challenges it is currently dealing with, namely the analysis of the gaps between current and future IT devoted to the employment in old age.
Co-organized by AGE Platform Europe, different specialized experts, representatives from the European Union, social institutions, companies and researchers with different backgrounds gathered to discuss and share the different findings that Goldenworkers has been identifying.
Introduced by Mr. Verboven Xavier, Co-president of the Co-ordination Group of the EESC activities during the European Year 2012, who stressed that “we should reinforce all activities oriented to add more participation from older people. This has to be embraced not only by the social security systems but also from the enterprises, its humans resources departments and mostly important by the managers and CEOs in charge of the older group staff members, they should contribute to the knowledge transitions before we miss all this background, experience and professionalism”, the workshop’s structure foresaw 3 panel session.
On the first panel session dedicated to ICT and Age Management, highlighted how “a well active ageing management and proactive solutions will definitely help the Europe’s skills shortage”, as Geert Van Droogenbroeck from Adecco Belgium explained, without forgetting about the intergenerational challenges, as Richard Donkin, independent writer and journalist from United Kingdom, mentioned:”it will be a collaboration issue between generations, and where younger’ ones will gain more about the interpretation of the ICT by the older users”.
The second panel session focused on “ICT and Flexicurity: For the Full Recognition of Everyone’s Added Value”, added other important insights. The Managing Director of AGE, Maciej Kucharczyk, highlighted the relevance of engaging all different actors, from decision makers to individual workers, including all levels, from the local to the European one, while Jacques Spelkens, from GDF Suez, gave his reflections building on the role of education and training, especially when dealing with constantly renewing technologies, as the knowledge evolves very rapidly and a special attention must be paid to the workers aged 40 plus.
The final third session on “Current and Future Trends on ICT: Raising Awareness on the Gap, Building the Future” pointed out a the lack of understanding of users’ needs by ICT designers, more specifically empathy for the users problems and expectations that can only be fostered in a close contact with them, as Fabio Casati from University of Trento acknowledged.
All the work by the Goldenworkers consortium has brought the possibility to search on different scenarios on ICT, expert’s visions on future trends, and the users’ and enterprises’ perspective on age management, which has been introduced to the EU level.
For more information on the workshop and the project, please get in touch withilenia.gheno@age-platform.eu“>ilenia.gheno@age-platform.eu. And visitwww.goldenworkers.org.
Help us writing the Goldenworkers Roadmap!
We are calling on everyone to evaluate the Roadmap developed so far in order to provide an overview of ageing at work in the future and how information and communication technology will shape this.
We are more than pleased to invite you to read our Roadmap (choosing either the full version or the executive summary) and provide your invaluable contribution via the on-line questionnaire.
Please click on the following link to the Goldenworkers survey: https://emeia2.ey-vx.com/survey/takeSurvey.asp?PageNumber=1&;SurveyID=92Hn67LJ766KG2
Please complete the survey no later than November the 30th. It will take no more than 10 minutes.
Your feedback is really important for us and is meant to help us revise and update the Roadmap, while collecting ideas to define the action plan meant to close the key gaps in this domain.
Thank you for your contribution!
