RETAIL

Retail sector Skills Alliance. Future Retail managers for efficient and flexicure SMEs.

Creation of the new professional profile of “Future Retail Manager”, endowed with the ability to bring innovation within SMEs, surviving to crisis and restructuring processes.

Retail trade is hugely dominated by SMEs, and strategic skills are even more important for retail managers. The great changes that affect the sector require new skills for employees and employers: more international and service oriented attitude, increase of ICT and marketing knowledge and expertise, better understanding of sustainability and health issues, capability to be flexible.

Commerce, one of the largest sectors of activity in Europe with more than 33 million persons employed, has been severely affected by crisis and restructuring processes. Globalisation and internationalisation, mass customisation, lifestyle changes and labour market flexibility pose huge challenges, especially to retail trade sector.
This is the commerce sector with the major presence of SMEs and most of them do not systematically focus on training due to great amount of daily operations and lack of strategic direction.
This project improves the competitiveness of the European system encouraging SMEs in promoting learning in the workplace environment, filling the shortages of the current VET system, and creating the new profile of the “Future Retail Manager”, able to bring innovation and growth.

The aims that CIAPE and the other 5 partners from Spain, Germany, France, Bulgaria and Norway, pursued are:
– Development of sectoral methods for anticipation of skills needs
– Design and implementation of specific initiatives that stimulate sector SMEs’ to invest in training
– Development of a new model of training provision within an overall lifelong learning strategy
– Set up of the EU curricula of the Future Retail Manager’s new professional profile, endowed with more advanced social, entrepreneurial and management skills
– Development of flexible devices for validation, transfer and recognition of learning outcomes, using ECVET principles
– Providing the sector with an Info-Formative Toolkit for this new Managerial profile – with a strong use of simulation and blended learning modalities
– Pilot the training on 120 retail managers
– Set up of a European Peer Development Network for Future Retail Managers

Leornardo da Vinci Development of Innovation – Lifelong Learning Programme

More info: ciape@ciape.it