Skilled Business Leaders for Skilled Europe (Lead4Skills) is an Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership project bringing together 8 organizations from 7 different countries. Its objective is to provide higher education institutions (HEIs) with a comprehensive set of insights, guidelines and materials that would help develop more relevant and innovative management education offerings and study processes, based on the real needs of businesses and economies.

Project duration: 1 September 2016 – 31 August 2018

A recent International Labour Organization study “Skills mismatch in Europe study 2014”, shows that labour market in Europe demonstrates various types of skill mismatch, including a mismatch between the number of job seekers and employment opportunities, which is reflected in unemployment. Labour market actors, especially education organizations, need to ensure that occupational requirements are matched through adequate education and training, providing labour market with need-based and real problem-based education. Empirical evidence shows that, in far too many cases, workers are not well matched to perform their jobs. 
Research shows that a number of enterprises across the EU (as many as 4 out of 10) are facing the challenge to find job applicants with the right skills. Common types of mismatches in labour markets across the EU include the discrepancy between the workforce qualifications and the specific needs of particular sectors and occupations within economies, as well as an imbalance between labour market needs and education provided. 

The emerging business issues (including those underscored by technological advancement, economic and political crises, and increasingly tangible effects of climate change, mass immigration, and income inequality and resource depletion – as reflected also in the new Sustainable Development Goals formulated by the UN with a global call for action) create new managerial and leadership challenges for companies and the necessity to develop new skills and knowledge in order to effectively address them. In turn, this presents a challenge, but also an opportunity, for education providers to develop new, more relevant, educational offerings, including through updates in curriculum, upgrade of teaching/learning tools and materials, as well as development of relevant teaching skills, based on recognition of specific business challenges and the consequent management and leadership development needs in companies.

The overall aim of the project is to provide higher education institutions (HEI) with a comprehensive set of insights, guidelines and materials that would help develop more relevant and innovative management education offerings and study processes, based on the real needs of businesses and economies and as a result stimulate reduction of management skills mismatch across EU and provide enterprises with better-skilled employees, decreasing their investments in new employee training and increasing their competitiveness on local, regional and international levels.

The project aims at exploring, identifying and assessing management and leadership development needs by focusing on:

• challenges faced by businesses (particularly with respect to management and leadership issues);
• exploration, identification and assessment of management and leadership development needs and how they may help address  challenges faced;
• critical evaluation of the results achieved and impacts made by management education to date;
• recommendations for learning partners, including specific guidelines, materials, and staff training.

The main needs and objectives of the project conform and address to Erasmus + program set fields as:

• strengthening the cooperation and networking between education organizations in EU;
• implementation of innovative practices using  best practices and partnership competencies;
• promotion of  the development of education systems;
• improving the quality and relevance of higher education;
• making the knowledge triangle work, including by inter-disciplinary cooperation;
• promoting the development of new modes of delivery and exploiting and responding to new technologies in learning and teaching.

Here you can find project website and social media accounts:

lead4skills.ceeman.org/
www.facebook.com/Lead4Skills
twitter.com/lead4skills
www.linkedin.com/company/lead4skills

Here you can find Lead4Skills Newsletter:

No.1

Here you can find all project activities: 

Meeting in Tallinn, October 2016 (1st Transnational Partner Meeting)

Meeting in Bled, January 2017 (2nd Transnational Partner Meeting)

Meeting in Bled, June 2017 (3rd Transnational Partner Meeting)

Meeting In Riga, October 2017 (4th  Transnational Partner Meeting)

Program and Education Process Management Seminar in Bled, April 2017

Conference "Best practices in management education" in Riga, October
2017

Trends in management education seminar in Bled, June 2017