Italy: Vodafone, first in line to access the State “New Skills” fund, will carry out 300,000 hours of training over 3 months for its entire staff

On 07 December an agreement between Vodafone Italia and the trade unions for staff vocational retraining received the green light to benefit from the ‘Nuove Competenze’ (New Skills) fund set up by the Ministry of Labor and managed by the employment agency ANPAL. The €730 million fund aims to promote vocational retraining and improve employees' digital skills, conditional on a specific collective agreement and an adjustment of working hours so as to provide the training during working hours. Vodafone is the first to benefit from the fund, and is closely followed by its competitor TIM, which is planning 100 training courses for its 37,500 employees.
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Vodafone promoting skills for all staff. The Future Ready Vodafone agreement signed by Vodafone Italia and the SLC-Cgil, Fistel-Cisl and Uilcom trade unions affects more than 5,500 of the group’s 6,000 employees in Italy (management levels are excluded) and provides for a total of more than 330,000 hours of training over 90 days, starting in mid-December and which will be based on a working-time arrangement. Over these three months, employees in the sales division will each receive 120 hours of

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