Italian firms bridge skills gap with own schooling
The Hindu
Italian companies like Webuild are creating training academies to address skill shortages and prepare workers for specialized jobs.
After years of informal work as a farm labourer, Federico Olivieri, 29, could not believe it when a huge building site appeared next to his home in Sicily with training on offer for many specialised jobs required.
The programme by Italy’s largest construction group Webuild is among a growing number of ‘academies’ run and financed by companies frustrated by many job-seekers lacking the know-how.
“We are being proactive about the problem. If the skills aren’t there, then we will create them ourselves,” Webuild’s Chief HR, Organisation & Systems Officer Gianluca Grondona told Reuters of the group’s programme.
Skill mismatches are an international problem but for Italy, with the lowest employment rate in the EU and productivity that has stagnated for more than two decades, it is acute.
Despite a large pool of people seeking work or outside the labour market, vacancy rates stood at 2.5% in the first quarter of 2024, in line with the EU average, data from European Union statistics agency Eurostat shows. This compares with 2.8% in France and 0.9% in Spain in the same period.
Vocational schools and colleges are fewer and less popular in Italy than in most European countries, think-tank Prometeia highlighted in a June report, and even those that there are fail to produce students with the right expertise.
At the same time, too many young people are still studying subjects with lower market demand, such as humanities, it said.
Revenues from the seven-year old Goods and Services Tax had not lived up to expectations, having attained pre-GST levels only now, and the objective of a ‘Good and Simple Tax’ remains elusive, former Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian said, terming the lack of critical data such as refunds a challenge.
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