Promoting digital skills for better employment opportunities
Future jobs and businesses need a workforce equipped with the right digital skills to take advantage of new technologies and close the productivity gap.
The challenge
Future jobs and businesses need a workforce equipped with the right digital skills to take advantage of new technologies and close the productivity gap – particularly if Europe is to keep up in areas such as AI and cybersecurity.
Europe cannot fully benefit from the new technologies necessary to improve its competitiveness without a workforce equipped with the right digital skills. A growing digital skills gap will also exacerbate other overlapping challenges, including worsening inequality, regional/rural disparities, education poverty, and a digital divide that disproportionately affects the elderly, women and the poor.
Only 54% of working age Europeans have sufficient digital skills for current workforce requirements and 70% of European businesses identify a lack of digital proficiency among their staff as an obstacle to investment.
Driving positive change
Continuous upskilling for businesses is essential to bring back the competitiveness of the European economy, especially for SMEs. Advanced digital skills raise global GDP by an estimated $6.3 trillion each year by boosting worker income and productivity.
Relevant policy positions
SME Digitalisation – charting a course towards resilience and recovery
Small and medium enterprises are the beating heart of Europe’s economy, and our post-COVID-19 recovery will be dependent on how well they are able to recover and thrive, driving innovation and job creation across the continent. This study analyses the experiences of SMEs through the crisis, from the start of the pandemic up until July 2020 – and it clearly demonstrates how digital has supported SME resilience throughout that period. We have also used this research to look to the future, consider how government digital policy can best support SMEs and ensure we do not see the ‘digital divide’ that was already evident in this area become further entrenched as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. We believe the findings are very relevant to governments as they put in place policies to ensure that SMEs have what they need to bounce back from COVID-19. This report includes expert independent analysis and evidence from Deloitte.
How can policymakers and industry work together to ensure effective digitalisation of SMEs
The current economic environment is challenging for all businesses in Europe. However, for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the inflationary pressure means that the cost of doing business may become unsustainable. Against this backdrop, and with overlapping crises impacting the global competitiveness of European businesses, digitalisation can unlock multiple benefits for SMEs. This paper aims to gauge SMEs’ needs in an increasingly digitalised world and how policymakers and large organisations can work together to help them realise their full digital potential, in line with the EU’s 2030 Digital Decade targets.
Progress towards the EU’s Digital Decade ambition
The European Union’s (EU) Digital Decade, which sets key targets on different digital areas until 2030, is the EU’s vision for Europe’s digital transformation and a critical element in Europe maintaining its global competitiveness in a rapidly changing world. Yet the proportion of businesses using cloud technology, in particular, must significantly increase in order to meet the European Commission’s Digital Decade 2030 goal. In this report, produced by Deloitte and commissioned by Vodafone, four key policy enablers are set out that could help enable the EU to realise its European Digital Decade goals.