EFFECTIVENESS OF A TRAINING PROGRAM TO DEVELOP FUTURE WORK SKILLS IN EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

According to recent studies, people will increase their possibilities for getting a job in 2020, when they are able to select the adequate information online and lead virtual teams.

We present, in this paper, a training program to promote the development of the Future Work Skills 2020 in European Graduates. This training program start from a diagnosis of students’ needs who follow master studies at University of Granada. On the other hand, the program is based on strategic lines provides by the Report titled “Future Work Skills 2020” created in the University of Phoenix . The European environment requires all those workers skills in today´s society. Although, these skills haven´t been included, properly and effectively, into the curriculum changes of Bologna process.

Everybody should improve ten skill to become an effective worker at state-owned or private European companies:
(1) Sense making or ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed.
(2) Social Intelligence or ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions.
(3) Novel and adaptive thinking or the proficiency at thinking and coming up solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based.
(4) Cross cultural competency or ability to operate in different cultural settings.
(5) Computational thinking or ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data based reasoning.
(6) New media literacy or ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication.
(7) Transdisciplinarity or ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines.
(8) Design Mindset or ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes.
(9) Cognitive Load Management or ability to discriminate and filter information for importance, and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and technique.
(10) Virtual Collaboration or ability to work productively, drive engagement, and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team.

The work plan of this training program is based on three modules of content, where are defined different techniques and methods to promote the ten skills on people. Moreover, we used an active methodology to train also these techniques on all sessions
Consequently, we expect outcomes related to needs previously demanded by the university students about training in global connectivity, cross cultural competency and lead of digital teams. Being all these items, constituents’ elements of our thinking about work. Also, we found unexpected but desired outcomes such as self-awareness of participants about a new professional environment, where companies ought to adapt to a new social environment influenced by smart cities and transform functions performed on a new jobs.