New skills, new job, new opportunities - the core values of work

Results of our activities remain our main focus in all projects that we implement. Developing the work.Her program is mainly about looking into the future, but it is not about the next week or year. We try to think about the entire decade. This is crucial in terms of thinking about labor market, improving skills and developing businesses. We must remember that, according to research, by 2030, each one of us will have to acquire at least one new skill in order to perform our current work. Most often it will be a digital one.

Work.Her program is about building relationships with three groups. First of all, it is cooperation with women who have made the decision to return to the labor market and develop their digital skills. To give work.Her a practical dimension and show that education and professional development brings an added value and quick results - we work with companies. Specifically, with those companies that recognize the need to hire new people with digital skills. They are natural partners of the project participants and work.Her. We set needs and goals together. In agreement with all parties interested in success, we create a training program.

The third group that benefits from such cooperation is actually all of us - participants of the labor market and the global economy. The aim of work.Her is not only to improve the competences of individuals, but also to increase the professional activity of women in the society. Currently, it amounts to 65.7% in Poland [EUROSTAT 2020]. Therefore, we invite organizations that consider themselves social investors to join us. When internal procedures or the organization's policy holds you back from joining our program as an employer, it doesn’t mean that we are out of options to act together and create common good. We develop additional support instruments and engage new groups of interested people and institutions.

Work.Her also means constant discussions and in-depth reflection on changes in society and the labor market. We constantly examine the needs and possibilities of supporting people and the market in the times of change. We see the needs in developing modern career counseling that meets the needs of the future. Formulas where the digital revolution, the circular economy and the economy based on certain values ​​come together into one big picture of the future. Perhaps this future will still be uncertain, but we will try our best to be ready to act together.

The Cooperation Fund Foundation continues to develop the work.Her program. It works as a space for cooperation between women seeking work and companies that want to find themselves in the changing world of the digital revolution. Like most of our projects, work.Her is focused on creating an added value. Our activities not only serve the directly involved parties, but also contribute to the common good. A world where it is easier to share responsibility for the future, and where you are empowered to take your piece of this responsibility on yourself.

Forecasts and research show that by 2030, each one of us, wanting to keep our current job or continue to pursue our profession, will have to learn at least one new thing. One that may not exist yet. Technologies will change, evolve and sometimes die rapidly to be replaced by new ones, that we don't even know yet. At the same time, our fundamental needs will not change. We will look for similar experiences, we will take care of similar issues. From the safety of our loved ones, through everyday shopping, to a climate catastrophe. All of this is mixed up in a world whose accelerated course was followed during subsequent lockdowns. What remains certain is that the changes will be sudden and continuous. We might start getting used to it.

Limited possibility of movement or the social isolation in the last year has showed us how many simple activities can actually be replaced with automation. The rapid development of the parcel machine network or spectacular growth of the number of self-service checkouts are just the most visible examples of what robotisation looks like. Those more subtle, such as phone applications that take care of our diet, the division of household duties, or even apps dedicated specifically for the events of the lives of our loved ones, sneak into our everyday life imperceptibly. We almost never think about robotic warehouses, autonomous agricultural machines or dynamically programmed routes for garbage trucks.

So should we all start writing complicated apps or programs? It won’t hurt, but the most necessary quality that the new times require from us is to get used to the idea that we are constantly learning. Since the change is certain, but its direction is a mystery, we must learn a reflective approach, in order to understand the change. This is what projects like work.Her are for. Working with the core competences that companies demand here and now is an urgent, specific task that needs to be done. Participants of our program learn quickly through trainings and immediately see the effect of their actions. Employment. However, this is only one aspect of our cooperation. The impulse to learn is also accompanied by coaching and working through the changes in life. This is how we come to the sense of following the changing world. As our activities are aimed at people who remained professionally inactive mainly due to caring for others or lost their jobs as a result of a pandemic, participation in the program gives them a chance to take responsibility for the future of their loved ones and their own. New skills, new job, new opportunities. All of this is combined into the ability to deal with an uncertain world.

On a larger scale than the fate of individuals and their families, work.Her also meets the goals of caring for the common good by targeting women in general. Eurostat’s data show that the professional activity of women in Poland is relatively low. If we look at the needs of searching for new talents in organizations and the specifics of the teams in which we should work in order to better respond to the needs of diverse recipients of services and products, it is obvious that the active role of women in creating and developing the digital economy is a must.