Rethinking work, skills and technology across Europe
When we talk about digital transformation, it is easy to focus on single projects. One of the highlights of the recent TechConnect Stakeholder Conference in Utrecht was seeing how TechConnect fits within a broader ecosystem of European initiatives working on skills, technology and the future of work.
During a dedicated session on “Transforming skills and technologies, linked cases and studies in the world of work”, two sister projects, SkillAIbility and NewWorkTech, joined TechConnect to share their perspectives. Together, they painted a richer picture of how Europe is rethinking work in a digital age.
NewWorkTech: understanding work transformation across sectors
Maija Hirvonen from NewWorkTech (Tampere University) then broadened the discussion further, focusing on how advanced technologies are reshaping the world of work more generally.
NewWorkTech’s contribution aligned closely with TechConnect’s interest in the organisational side of digitalisation. Where TechConnect’s ethnographic case studies dig deep into hospitals, NewWorkTech looks across sectors to understand:
- How organisations reorganise tasks, roles and responsibilities when new technologies are introduced.
- What kinds of organisational change strategies help or hinder successful adoption.
- How workers experience technological change in terms of identity, autonomy and everyday practice.
The challenges observed in hospitals are not unique. Issues such as misaligned training, poorly adapted workflows and underused technologies appear in many sectors. NewWorkTech’s cross‑sector findings helped validate TechConnect’s insights and underlined the need for joined‑up policy responses.
SkillAIbility: skills for an AI‑enabled world
Brendan Patrick Sullivan from SkillAIbility (Politecnico di Milano) introduced how the project approaches skills development in the context of AI.
While TechConnect looks closely at human–technology complementarity in hospital settings, SkillAIbility zooms in on how workers acquire and update the skills needed to work with AI systems across different sectors. In the context of the conference, this created a powerful bridge between TechConnect’s findings on the “affordance gap” and the kinds of training and learning pathways that can realistically close that gap.
Key themes that resonated strongly with TechConnect stakeholders included:
- The need to design training that rerflects actual workplace conditions, not just idealised technical specifications.
- The importance of transferable, cross‑cutting capabilities – such as critical thinking and judgement – that allow workers to adapt as AI systems evolve.
- The value of viewing skills as part of a continuous learning journey, rather than a one‑off acquisition.
Taken together, the contributions from SkillAIbility, NewWorkTech and TechConnect pointed to a set of shared convictions that are increasingly backed by evidence across different sectors and countries:
- Digital transformation is fundamentally a human challenge, not a technical one.
- Skills cannot be treated in isolation from the organisational and technological contexts in which people work.
- Cross-project collaboration, sharing methods, findings and frameworks — accelerates progress and avoids duplication across the European research community.
This session proofs TechConnect is part of a broader European effort to understand and improve the relationship between people and technology at work. The questions we are asking in hospitals in Ireland, Sweden, Spain and the Netherlands are being asked in factories, offices and public services across the continent.
