Skills Swap: sharing skills for WBL in VET for Europe’s hospitality sector

Skills Swap is aimed at upgrading the efficacy and relevance of contemporary VET in the hospitality sector by designing and integrating into sector-based VET provision an innovative 'skills swap' approach to employer-facilitated learning design in work-based learning (WBL) for employees and apprentices. ‘Skills Swap' initiatives focus on skills sharing within the sector for the mutual benefit of companies, VET participants and employees. By 'skills swap', we mean structured WBL opportunities where employees and apprentices are released from their roles with one employer for a fixed duration (typically half a day to 2 weeks) to learn skills provided by another employer. At the same time, employers benefit from the skills swap from the new skill(s) and/or fresh perspectives that their employees bring to their business as a result of the ‘swap’. In support of key Erasmus+ Horizontal and Sectoral Priorities, this project is developed between the companies and VET professionals; trainers and careers specialists who understand the needs of those who are their WBL trainees (apprentices and those in a C-VET context) - in a fast-changing sector that faces many challenges with recruitment, retention and keeping up to date. The project will facilitate, through transparent occupational profiling based on tasks, transparency in WBL objectives while also providing resources and guides to employers, and in particular 'clusters' of SMEs and micro enterprises in hospitality, who struggle to offer progression routes to their employees and find it hard to undertake successful apprenticeships or retain staff. By designing a new, structured WBL methodology the project aims to enhance the VET system to promote good practices and encourage peer learning amongst companies. The benefits envisaged by the project include a new WBL methodology that will improve access to opportunities for progression and promotion by increasing the skills range of employees and apprentices in the hospitality sector. This implementation of this methodology is supported by new pedagogical and digital tools, designed to be support the mutual recognition, transparency and validation of the skills that are acquired within the hospitality industry. It is designed specifically for VET in hospitality but is highly transferable to other WBL contexts, occupational sectors and European countries outside those participating in the project. EU VET policy encourages increasing involvement from employers in VET programme design and implementation, and for providers to demonstrate how their programmes are relevant to the current and anticipated needs of specific employment sectors. Yet practical examples and new ideas as to how to do this in a genuinely innovative way are sometimes lacking. Therefore Skills Swap is a novel attempt to create employer-led and employer-needed VET solutions in WBL.