THE PROJECT
Programme: 341356 Rilevanza regionale – C – Azioni di Sistema – Regione Lombardia 2005
Main contractor: Laser Coop.
Role of Artes: Partner
Financed by: Lombardia Region (2006)
AIMS
The project, realised within the framework of systemic reform conducted by the Region of Lombardy, deals with a problem well recognised by both of training/education and industry systems: the difficulties related to the entry of young people into the workplace.
Too often, at the end of a lengthy and costly period of education or professional training, the qualified job-seeker finds the labour market utterly unwelcoming. Clearly this is due, to some extent, to macro-economic forces. However, a corresponding difficulty in finding satisfactory applicants which has been experienced by employers who are ready and willing to recruit newly qualified job-seekers suggests that other significant factors are at play. These factors seems to concern systemic obstacles to mutual understanding and cooperation between the sphere of education and training and that of industry.
It is with the identification and removal of such obstacles that the project is concerned, by means of a pilot action designed to discover possible way to overcome such obstacles and which promotes a new relationship between the worlds of education\training and that of industry.
POTENTIAL USERS
Training experts and industrial entities, intermediaries, policy makers, psychologists, new recruits, job-seekers, and their families.
Educationalists see their sphere as becoming ever more complicated they must respond to an ever widening educative field and form bonds with the world of work and take account of the shifting societal trends and enhanced expectations as regards productivity.
Every productive organization, industrial or otherwise, must form active partnership from the first educative phase onwards. To attain the goal of a new relationship between educationalists and the professional world and the modification of the educative system occurs at three fundamental levels:
- R&D designed to favour the integration of the learning process and actions related thereto.
- The establishment of a multi-professional system not only at educative level but also at that of research into the dynamics of learning; therefore related to supervision and measurement of success.
- The internationalisation of the system which provides a suitable perspective as regards expanding horizons in relationship to the organizations of the future, reflecting the situation of the new generation.
Talent tree hopes to rise to this challenge, experimenting with innovative techniques at systemic level in the fascinating field of hospitality.
OUTCOMES
The first R&D phase of the project has led to the creation of a model, the Competence Reactor which constitutes an orientation map for both the spheres of education/training and industry and which in turn implies a multi service entity to which the name Talent Tree has been given.
The model of professional quality: The Competence Reactor
What do we expect from a young person just starting out in the workplace? For one year the project team has been in discussion with major players from the world of education and training and that of industry as well as those representing public or political entities. The team has examined the changing trends within the hugely diverse sector of hospitality so as to individuate those essential competencies without which a young person has no chance of a rapid and efficient recruitment due to the ever increasing competitive pressures which exist in a fast-changing sector.
Thus the macro areas of critical competence have been identified and schematised accordingly. Each element is in turn related to a set of performance indicators which allow for an evaluation as to whether the necessary standard has been attained.
We then posed ourselves a further question: How can this level of competence be developed? What generates it? The Competence Reactor was conceived as a practical response to this issue. It identifies the components which interact at systemic level so as to generate professional competence and, particularly, which afford a firm grip on the macro areas of critical competence.
