Focus Groups to know more about national WISEs specificities

Under the coordination of Idee In Rete, the B-WISE project partners started working on the second Work-Package “Building Scenarios and “Personas” for Sectoral Skills Strategy, with the objective to identify occupational profiles that need to be revised or created and the concrete skills needed with a particular focus on digital and green skills. Those occupational profiles will then be the basis to prepare curricula for WISEs workers.

In this framework, national focus groups, composed of WISEs representatives, WISEs experts and relevant stakeholders, were held throughout Europe, during the month of April 2022, by project partners: Johannes Kepler University Linz (Austria); Lichtwerk and RES (Belgium); NASOR (Bulgaria); Faculty of Law of the University of Zagreband and ACT Grupa (Croatia); Fédérations française des Entreprises d'Insertion (France); Ev Zin (Greece); Idee In Rete (Italy); Social Entrepreneurship Association of Latvia (Latvia); De Omslag (The Netherlands); Stowarzyszenie Współpracy Regionalnej (Poland); Rise Romania and Alaturi de Voi România Foundation(Romania); ŠENT-The Slovenian Association for Mental Health (Slovenia); Fundación ONCE (Spain).

Following the first part of the project, a report on trends and challenges for work integration social enterprises (WISEs) in Europe – Current situation of skills gaps, especially in the digital area, the project aimed, during this phase to work on three main aspects:

• Validate and precise the different WISEs models with the support of local, regional, and national stakeholders: Productive WISEs, Social WISEs and Training WISEs;
• Identify the main and the most common sectors of activity of WISEs;
• Identify, for each type of WISEs, the skills needed, in particular in what regards digital and green skills by taking into consideration the current situation and the future evolution of the skills and the WISEs.

Taking these three aspects into account, the discussion focused on the entrepreneurial characteristics of WISEs such as their income and the way they use of technologies, but also the integration pathways of workers with supports needs, the types of contracts they can have and their remuneration. The public support policies were also part of the items discussed during the national exchange, particularly the direct and/or indirect public support policies and access to reserved contracts, with the goal to categorise which model of WISEs can obtain these supports and to what extent.

A report containing various results of this Work-Package, including those of the national focus group, will be published on our website.