Doing smart remote working as fully motivated staff member

<< Background >>Given the rapid digitisation of businesses during and following the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an urgent need to train employers and employees in digital skills and to teach them how to work, live and do business in a digital environment, in order to keep up with production and consumption trends and boost their competitiveness. This work could not be carried out without the help and support of VET providers, who are the key players in training and retaining skilled employees, in order to accelerate best practice in SMEs in terms of collaboration, flexibility, inclusion and empowerment in the 'new normal'. However, there was a lack of information and training for the workforce, in particular to keep them motivated and operational in increasingly virtual environments, within teams working remotely, but for which a framework appeared necessary to prevent any drift.<< Objectives >>Whether the change is towards more distance learning, a return to more face-to-face learning or a consolidation of a hybrid mode, it is essential to do so in an innovative way. It is therefore crucial for SMEs and VET providers to have tools and policies that help to mediate the process of change in order to ensure digital transformation by enabling them to be prepared, resilient and digitally capable from all personal and professional perspectives. To achieve this, the project Work4Future aimed to share a set of techniques and advice on how to behave in a virtual environment, how to overcome the difficulties posed by remote working and the effect on personal life, including techniques to maintain team spirit between colleagues, to be more digitally literate, more resilient, motivated to lead and to develop one's capabilities. This new approach will raise awareness of the new form of team management and enhance the knowledge and skills of training professionals and senior managers (coaches), all from the project W4F interactive platform.<< Implementation >>In order to bring the project to a successful conclusion, in addition to the cross-cutting activities relat-ing to (i) coordination and implementation, (ii) quality control and ongoing evaluation of the process, (iii) dissemination and (iv) exploitation of the project results, W4F partnership produced innovative tools by carrying out various activities (research, analyses, field experiments, creation of tools, etc.) and by calling on various resources both internally (within the organisations and the partnership) and externally (through its own networks and by drawing on other available resources such as EPALE).These new outputs help to offer a wider range of resources for improving management of remote working and personal life, taking account of the latest and best practices while developing and strengthening the digital skills of all professionals.<< Results >>The project offers training modules on the skills required for smart working, as well as providing interactive resources and a guide to implementing them via W4F online platform.The project has produced 4 main results: - Work4Future training framework presenting the main parameters and methodology used;- The Team Management Guide comprising six training modules to help create productive and collaborative teams in the context of remote working;- The Guide for Coaches, which provides methodological information for delivering W4F training, interacting with learners and helping them to make optimum use of the platform's tools in complete autonomy. - W4F platform which hosts all the educational content, resources and tools developed as part of the project, offering online and distance learning using a Webquest structured research activity.All the project deliverables are available free of charge in 7 languages (BG, EN, FR, GR, IT, PT and SK) on the https://work4future.eu website and W4F Facebook page created for this purpose, as well as on the project partners’ websites.