Education at the center. Interview with Mario Del Vecchio

30 June 2022

We asked Mario Del Vecchio, BBS Alumnus and Business Manager at Enginium, the tech soul of Gi Group Holding, which recently joined the Bologna Business School business network, to analyze the job market for us with a focus on issues related to HR, training, and placement. Here is what he told us.

 In the current market environment, what are the elements that emerge most prominently with respect to the possibility of building a valuable career?

The market today is candidate driven, which increases competition among companies in their ability to attract the most in-demand talent, to offer them attractive propositions, growth prospects, and continued employability. In an extremely uncertain and changing environment, the role of companies therefore lies in their ability to improve their resilience both in terms of business and from the talent attraction and retention point of view. It therefore becomes essential to understand the new needs of employees and managers. But this is not a natural or easy process for the entrepreneur and the company. Indeed, what the candidate looks for and evaluates as attractive in a company’s offering has changed profoundly. In addition to remuneration, several factors come into play. Today, for example, the notion of work as an opportunity for personal fulfillment, but also the need to share values with the company, has regained strength. Work loses its totalizing dimension to make room for the desire to pursue a lifestyle balanced between employment, personal interests and family needs. 

At this historical moment, we are required to rethink the role that people, companies and institutions play within the economic and social reality in order to cope with all the transformations and changes in the world of work. Players, including a business like ours, committed to generating sustainable social and economic value, must support people so that they can remain professionally active throughout their lives, promoting tangible, replicable, and measurable models that contribute to the realization of sustainable world of work development.

Given the context you outlined, what, from your perspective, is the challenge for education? 

We believe that education should be at the center of the debate on employment in Italy, and effectively respond to the needs of companies: this is the only way to substantially intervene on people’s employability and on phenomena such as skill mismatch and skill shortage. In this sense, it is essential that the different education protagonists interact and work in synergy to ensure a training offering of excellence, which is consistent with the reference market and educates to the recognition of the personal and social value of work.

Professional and managerial training as well as the qualification and re-skilling of people has become a key element for the survival and evolution of any organization and must be pursued and supported with specific processes and tools capable of motivating and facilitating continuous learning not only at the personal level but also at the organizational level.

With this conviction, and strengthened by the experience of the Palazzo del Lavoro, we have overseen the development of the Gi Group Training Hub, a space entirely dedicated to training and orientation that aims to be a free and open place for discussion and sharing, a meeting point that provides the necessary conditions so that we can establish a structure built on the topic of training.

What are the growing sectors and opportunities that should not be underestimated in the current market environment?

Today the leading sectors of the labor market are Industry 4.0, Engineering, Telco, ICT, Logistics, GDO, and Healthcare. This is also in light of the two ongoing transitions, the green and the digital ones. It is estimated that in the next few years the Italian labor market will require 2.4-2.7 million employees to have energy saving and environmental sustainability abilities, and in parallel, there will be a growing and transversal demand for digital skills, which will be required by businesses and the Public Administration (2.1-2.3 million employees between 2022 and 2026). However, today the mismatch of skills with those required by companies is a growing phenomenon and one of the main causes of the non-sustainability of the current labor market. 

In this scenario of skill shortage and mismatch, it is not sustainable to neglect women’s skills and not find solutions to the gender gap phenomenon. Eurostat estimates that 70 percent of the employed female population is concentrated in only 7 out of 21 sectors. Added to this is the topic of young women studying STEM subjects, for whom Italy lags far behind: 24.9 percent share of 25-34-year-old graduates in science and technology (STEM) subject areas, among young men one in three graduates (36.8 percent), while among young women only one in six (17 percent).

The role that Gi Group Holding plays in the labor market is also to foster the dialogue between the world of business and the world of education. The partnership established with Bologna Business School goes precisely in this direction and is enhanced thanks to the shared values between our two entities and the prestige that this institution boasts nationally and globally.



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