Steel Sector Careers

Steelmaking is a key industrial sector in Europe, but it is changing at a fast pace. Domestic and global competition are fierce and new skills are highly in demand. The EU cannot and does not intend to compete on cheap labour and low social standards.

However, to ensure Europe’s position as an innovator and a global competitor in this market, it is essential to attract workers with the right skillset. Rather than engaging in a price war with other steel-producing economies, the EU intends to become a leader in innovative and high-quality products and stay ahead of the technological curve by investing in new processes and technologies. For this, new investments – also in the workforce – are needed.
Several key actions are required to build and foster a competitive European steelmaking workforce characterised by innovation, quality and technology. They include bridging the gap between the needs of the steelmaking industry and the availability of a qualified workforce as well as raising awareness about steelmaking job opportunities and removing misperceptions and tackling negative aspects around steelmaking jobs.

Skills & employment

Skills, skills needs, re-skilling, careers and employment

Business & SMEs

Businesses and SMEs, steel producers and the steel sector

EU Policy

Analysis and policy recommendations

Market Research

Data collection, gaps analysis, needs assessment

Behavioural

Perceptual and behavioural analysis

Communications

Stakeholder engagement, workshops, events, materials

A world of opportunities

Launched in 2019, the project aimed to counter the misperceptions that heavily influence the image of the steel sector and create a better understanding of the sector, by:

  • overcoming the prevalent opinions and negative perceptions
  • enabling high-skilled workers to understand the positive aspects of steel sector careers
  • enhancing visibility and upscaling the use of existing tools and initiatives for job mobility and steel sector skills development
  • facilitating and fostering skills development in the steel sector, but also showing the level of skills required by the steel sector to attract graduates
  • helping companies in the steel sector to overcome gaps, shortages and mismatches between skills supply and demand

We were responsible for collecting data on the skills needs of the future as well as the drivers affecting the perception of the sector. We did this through the deployment of various data collection instruments, including desk research, semi-structured interviews and two multi-component surveys, leveraging crowdsourcing platforms to collect the needed responses. Once the data was collected, we cleaned it, structured it and analysed it using a variety of advanced analytics, behavioural and perceptual analysis methods. The findings from the analysis then served to develop policy and communications recommendations on how to ensure that the skills needs are met, and the image of the sector improved.

18

MONTHS

65

INTERVIEWS

2511

SURVEY RESPONDENTS