Reskilling today for an inclusive future - building skills in Italy

Our journey to a technology communications company is driving demand for digital skills such as AI, Automation, Coding and Analytics and our Academies are designed to help our employees continuously develop in these areas. To keep up with the pace of change and ensure an inclusive, digital future, we’re building a new skills-based approach for more personalised learning and career recommendations tailored to an individual’s skill profile and personal aspirations.

Vodafone Italy were first to pilot a skills first approach and accelerate building capability in digital skills by launching ambitious training programs to all Vodafone employees as part of a broader skill transformation program addressing future roles.

The team designed a series of upskilling & reskilling journeys involving 10 functions and 4,600+ people (86% of the total population) by using a skills survey to understand current capability, resulting in the mapping and clustering of 161 skills, of which 37% were digital skills.

The team used this skills mapping and a skill matching tool to design appropriate learning journeys, including highly specialised training courses to help employees take on new roles in Big Data, 5G and Artificial Intelligence.

So far, Italy has successfully reskilled over 2,300 people, with 115 moving into new roles. In addition, Vodafone Italy also launched an overall training program for 5,500 colleagues to help build the skills of the future, providing approximately 500,000 hours of training in the last year.

The training plan provided a unique opportunity for all employees to invest in self-development and experiment with a variety of learning formats across 3 key areas:

“Technology drives Digital transformation but can only be enabled by people - explains Ilaria Dalla Riva, HR and Organization Director of Vodafone Italy. For this reason, we knew it was critical to help our people explore and refresh their skillset. Thanks to the New Skills Fund in Italy, we have the opportunity to accelerate our plan and extend it to the entire company. Preparing ourselves for the professions of the future - concludes Dalla Riva - means investing in the resilience of people’s work and therefore also in the resilience of the organization, in its ability to adapt to change”.

The work in Italy highlights that a focus on upskilling & reskilling can help build diverse talent and future skills. What’s key to doing this at pace and at scale, is having the right technology in place to automate the approach by offering highly personalised learning and career experiences, creating more opportunity for people to thrive at Vodafone.