As employers in Ireland seek to address critical skills gaps and respond to challenges posed by climate change and digital transformation, many businesses are recognising upskilling and reskilling as a crucial part of future-proofing jobs, retaining talent and empowering employees with the skills to create more sustainable, competitive, and profitable businesses.

As the state agency responsible for Further Education and Training (FET) in Ireland, SOLAS drives the innovation, transformation and sustainability of the FET sector, working collaboratively with our key stakeholders and partners, including the 16 Education and Training Boards (ETBs), to ensure that FET can play a key role in the delivery of workforce transformation.

What makes FET unique is its ability to respond quickly to the critical skills needs in Ireland, due to its local and flexible nature.

SOLAS, alongside ETBs, has worked actively to support enterprise through a range of measures which means that FET options are now seen as a valuable way for people to upskill and reskill throughout their lives.

With all these options, there has never been a better time to join the 1 in 10 people in Ireland engaging in FET.

Innovative FET provision for Enterprise includes:

■ Skills to Advance Initiative: Skills to Advance, a national initiative created and funded by SOLAS, has been vital in providing upskilling and reskilling opportunities.

Over 25,000, upskilling places were taken up by employees through Skills to Advance in 2024 in areas such as sustainability, digital and robotics equipping them with the necessary skills to progress in their careers, or adapt to changes in their current roles.

The success of the Skills to Advance model is that it is industry-led and relies on a close working relationship with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The benefits for employers are huge as they can identify their skills needs and get highly subsidised upskilling opportunities via education and training to their workforce.

Skills to Advance programmes are currently supporting business needs across a range of industry sectors, from healthcare and hospitality to advanced manufacturing and biopharma.

Find out more at: www.skillstoadvance.ie

■ Micro-Qualifications: In January 2024, SOLAS launched a new suite of Micro-Qualifications, an innovative new FET offering as part of the Skills to Advance initiative.

Provided by ETBs, Micro-Qualifications are specifically designed to address the time and cost barriers to upskilling faced by SMEs and importantly they are co-designed and developed with key strategic sectoral and enterprise stakeholders, and Regional Skills Fora, assuring their relevance to immediate, and emerging skills needs.

For more information, visit: www.solas.ie/microqualifications/

■ Specialist Centres for Skills Development: The development of specialist centres of skills development by ETBs has been another pivotal resource.

SOLAS has supported ETBs to develop specialist centres which include hospitality in Limerick, biopharma in Cork, and the provision of critical construction skills through the development of the Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) Demonstration Park in Mount Lucas (Laois and Offaly ETB) and the rollout of Nearly Zero Energy Building (NZEB) Centres of Excellence, and advanced manufacturing in Dundalk. Courses are developed with industry for industry, and range in length from one day to a handful of days, with evening and weekend provision available across most programmes.

This ensures that time spent off-site for upskilling is minimal with short, flexible and hybrid offerings available at little or no cost.

An exciting new funded partnership was also launched with Enterprise Ireland to expand access to companies, with particular targeting of the clients of Local Enterprise Offices. 

In addition to this, participation on our eCollege courses has seen a steady growth gradually back to the demand seen during the height of the pandemic, when we opened up the online resource to everyone.

In 2024 almost 37,000 learners have accessed online learning through eCollege.

This has been fuelled by diversifying the offering, with green skills now part of the offering.

eCollege provides an important vehicle to support quick upskilling of employees, who may need flexible learning options that they can do in their own time.

Explore the options at: www.ecollege.ie/