Human-centred digital transitions: skill mismatches in European workplaces

The presentations, posters, programme and photos of the event are available in the Downloads section below. 

Recent improvements in autonomous digital technologies, such as fast developments in generative artificial intelligence (AI), can markedly affect skill demand in workplaces and foster skill mismatches. Technological change can substitute human capital, resulting in automation and job loss, but it can also contribute to mainly high-skilled work, augmenting labour and improving job quality.

Policy debate has recently been calling for a ‘human-centred’ technological change; yet further research is needed on how new digital technologies may have negative or positive labour market outcomes for workers, and on how they may interact with their job tasks, upskilling needs and overall job quality. Greater focus should also be placed on the relationship between digitalisation and worker upskilling/reskilling needs, and on how these may be governed by different forms of work organisation. Deeper understanding of the interaction between technology adoption in workplaces, (algorithmic) management practices and investment in workers’ continuing skill development may assist in the design of a human-capital-friendly regulatory framework.

This Cedefop workshop focused on investigating underlying factors of different forms of joined agency between humans and technology, and how these may differ across various workplace environments with diverse human resource management practices. Understanding the conditions under which different digital technologies may have positive or negative implications for workers’ upskilling and skills matching outcomes is a key aim of the workshop. To achieve it, experts presented new evidence, mainly but not exclusively based on data from Cedefop’s second European skills and jobs survey (ESJS2) microdata.

The workshop was organised around the following themes:

• How do (new) digital technologies interact with human capital and what factors determine if there is complementarity or substitutability of technology for skills?
• How do (new) digital technologies increase or  reduce workers’ skilling needs?
• How is the effect of digitalisation on the labour market mediated by different job-skill requirements and alternative forms of work organisation?
• What types of skill mismatches are associated with the adoption of new digital technologies in workplaces?
• How does the adoption of digital technologies in firms interact with their human resource management and skill utilisation strategies?
• What drivers and policies may influence workers’ participation in education and training activities to cope with new digital technologies?

The keynote lecture was given by Professor Chris Warhurst, Director of Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick.

Professor Chris Warhurst FRSA FAcSS is Director of the Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick in the UK. He is an internationally recognised expert on job quality and skills. He has published 18 books including the Oxford Handbook of Job Quality (2022) and the Oxford Handbook of Skills and Training (2017). He is currently the UK lead for a Horizon Europe project on Industry 5.0 (Bridges 5.0) and about to lead a new UK project to create healthy jobs. He is/has been an expert advisor to the UK, Australian and Scottish Governments and the OECD.

Participation in the event was by invitation only to authors of accepted papers from the following call for submissions and to a limited number of registered individuals.