Involving five partners from Germany, Austria, Portugal, Belgium and Finland, the project has as main beneficiaries staff and professionals (e.g. trainers, consultants, tutors, among others) of Small and Medium Enterprises from the sectors of tourism and commerce/trade. Overall, all professionals that may act as multipliers and promoters of Digital Competences in SMEs are potential beneficiaries of the project.

On April 3-4, 2018, the partners involved in DC4WORK project met in Matosinhos, Portugal to exchange their research in each partner country.

The first output was briefly presented and discussed during the first day of meeting.  The aims of Intellectual Output 1 is to perform a comprehensive study on the awareness and practices existent in the SMEs of the sectors of tourism and commerce/trade, in what concerns the measure, promoting and development of employees’ digital competences at their workplace. A set of activities, including collection of surveys, identification of good practices and performing interviews, are being implemented since the beginning of the project in each partner country. The aim of these activities is to understand the panorama of the assessment and development of digital skills of workers from SMEs of the sectors of tourism and commerce/trade in partners countries.

In these first tasks it becomes clear the differences between sectors and countries in what concerns, not only the practices of SMEs in assessing and promoting the digital skills of their workers, but also the need of promoting digital skills of workers in companies of both sectors. Nevertheless, some common recommendation can be drawn from this first analysis:

• Networking and sustainable partnerships between SMEs & Vocational training professional for joint initiatives on assessing and promoting digital skills at the workplace are crucial for the successful of introduction of these procedures in SMES;
• Investing in raising awareness of the importance of digital competences on the working life and sharing knowledge about best practices in on-demand competence development are also critical to promote the active involvement of companies in all this process.

The next step is the design and development of Intellectual Output 2 – Guidelines “Digital competence promoter” in SMEs, which first draft will be prepared by the end this year.

Keep updated on the activities and main outcomes of the project visiting project website and following us on Facebook. In case you are willing to contribute and participate in the activities of this project please contact IHK-Projektgesellschaft mbH | projekt@ihk-projekt.de.