The Project

Europe is facing the problem of an aging population, which is on the top of the EC 2020 Strategies. According to Eurostat EU27 active population is about 58 million people between 50-60 years old, representing almost 25% of the whole active population, when 22% of the young people below 24 are unemployed. In some countries hardest hit by the crisis, the rate is even higher.

In “Demography, active aging and pensions” May 2012, the Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, L�szl� Andor, stressed that “The ageing of Europe’s population is a major challenge for the decades ahead, (...) employment and productivity can be boosted through investment in training, lifelong learning, job-placement support, (...) and measures ensuring that young people have opportunities for professional development (...)”.

People are living healthy longer lives, which opens large opportunities to continue working and having important roles in the world of work. By the other hand, is visible a lack of vocational skills from the younger population including the new comers to world of work, wanting to increase their work performance, be creative, competitive, increasing their employability, going up in their careers.

How to retain older workers in a rewarding job, increasing job satisfaction, self-respect and simultaneously qualifying younger active population improving their performance for the profit of the companies where they both work?

Training plays a crucial part, but often fails because it is not adapted to the specific expectations and needs of the target groups and it’s not linked with the results on competitiveness.

After 2012 European Year for Active Aging, this is faced as a challenge which opens also many opportunities of lifelong learning for the people involved, articulated with the urgent need of raising productivity and economic performance.

This is our conviction � 7 partners from 6 different countries - Portugal, Belgium, Turkey, Slovakia, Poland, UK, who identified the same weaknesses and opportunities and join efforts and complementary expertise to promote this innovative project in the field of Mentoring. Due to its previous work in the field, the consortium identified the Mentoring as an opportunity to promote the interchange of experience and competences between generations inside companies/SMEs, oriented to improve competitiveness, investing in lifelong learning.

Older active population possesses an important knowledge and skills capital which can be potentiated through an inter-generational process of transferring skills and accompanying younger active population in their jobs and careers within SMEs which are a strong pillar of the employer system in Europe.

Be a Mentor in the Workplace is a project which promotes the development of mentoring skills, under the perspective of work based lifelong learning, of both mentors and mentees, envisaging a strong impact in the enterprises and SMEs, regarding the productivity and quality enhancement, the improvement of organization and intergeneration climate, job satisfaction and motivation and valorisation of the target-groups by adopting new models of learning in the workplace and the use of ICT facilities.

The project consists in the transfer of already existing and validated tools and methodologies, adapted, tested, validated and implemented in new target-groups. Through this transfer process, the project will develop:

The consortium envisages to contribute to promote work-based lifelong learning closer to the needs of increasing economic performance and competitiveness of SMEs with a strong multiplying effect throughout Europe.
The project started on 01 October 2013 and will end on 30 September 2015.