Project Summary
About the project
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of Europe’s economy. They represent 99% of all businesses in the EU. In the past five years, they have created around 85% of new jobs and provided two-thirds of the total private sector employment in the EU. The European Commission considers SMEs and entrepreneurship as key to ensuring economic growth, innovation, job creation, and social integration in the EU. This is especially important taking into account that according to Eurostat an average of more than 60% of SME die in the first five years of live, and the right election of the staff has much to do.
Most of those small businesses are micro companies with less than 10 employees. Taking these factors into account, the election of the right fellow travellers is one of the key decisions for a small entrepreneur, because the chances of success or fail will largely depend on the people chosen. Employees are a critical component of any business, but though in big corporations, with a specific HRM department, this election is an almost systematic process, in SMEs it is even more important. Employees are part of the delivery of the product and service. Their performance, commitment and loyalty to the job are critical, but even more in a SME, where they have to share the passion, motivation, values and standards of the entrepreneur. Obviously the election has to do with technical competences, but in a micro company, with a more direct and human contact, there are other aspects which are essential.
Hiring the right candidate involves more than just assessing their technical skills and knowledge. Competencies play a crucial role in determining how successful a candidate will be at organizations which globally are struggling to plug their skills-gaps and are sourcing talent from unconventional channels. Competency-based hiring is the solution to ensuring you have the right person for the job.
The objectives of the project
The project plans to help young entrepreneurs and SMEs in the implementation and development of human resources on their own companies. Caring about the employees by the development by an appropriate management of the human resources is the first step for a company who is aiming to grow. Young entrepreneurs without human resources education will receive the information about the right soft skills for this area, through OER (Open educational Resources) platform. In addition, with the development of these soft skills, young entrepreneurs will get other skills that are essential to be successful in the company.
To achieve this, the Caring for Employees project pursues the following objectives:
I To develop entrepreneur soft skills in human resources.
II To increase the intellectual capital of the organization.
III To promote and encourage personal development.
IV To optimize the selection and development of new talents.
Outputs
IO1: Self-Evaluation in Human Resources soft skills. The project consortium will identify what are the most important soft skills in Human Resources Management. The aim is to maximize the human capital resources available to companies and assist entrepreneurs in identifying their level of transversal soft skills. By securing the involvement of the young entrepreneurs, they will get other skills that are essential to be successful in the company.
IO2: Development of the Open Educational Resources in human resources soft skills. Once the soft skills are recognized after the analysis in the Intellectual Output 1. The project consortium will prepare the Open Educational Resources. It will be developed one Open Educational Resource for each soft skill detected in the Intellectual Output 1.
IO3: Development of the Inspiring Success Stories in soft skills. With the selected soft skills in IO1, the project consortium will prepare three Inspiring Success Stories in soft skills in each of the identified ones.
Disclaimer
The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
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