Identifying Future Skills for the Digital Transformation in the Steel Industry: An Ecosystem Analysis in the German Rhein/Ruhr Area

The digitalisationDigitalisation of the world of work is accompanied by far-reaching processes of change. This also affects jobs and skills of employees and managers. This chapter presents the results of an empirical BEYOND 4.0 study on transversal future skill demands and takes a closer look at the steel industry in the Rhine/Ruhr region in Germany. The focus thereby lies on skills that are gaining in importance across all occupations and at all qualification levels. At that, an important orientation is provided by a category system for future skills, which was developed in the BEYOND 4.0 project. Based on a comprehensive literature research, the category system shows that it is not only digital skillsSkilldigital that are crucial for the digital transformation, as non-digital skills, such as social, personalSkillPersonal and methodological skillsSkillmethodological, are also gaining in importance across all jobs and sectors. The category system was then applied in the research in the steel industry in the Rhine/Ruhr region. Research was mainly based on qualitative interviews that were conducted with steel experts from a number of stakeholder groups. The empirical results underline the importance of non-digital skills, often summarised as “soft skills”, in combination with digital skills. Digital skillsSkilldigital thereby plays a role at all levels of qualification. However, the experts of the regional steel sector emphasise that it is above all the requirements for lifelong learning that are strongly increasing due to digitalisationDigitalisation. Personal skillsSkillPersonal such as adaptability and willingness to change play an important role in this regard. The findings also show that especially in large steel producing companies, topics that are specifically related to the development of digital solutions are often dealt with in projects, in which experts from different disciplines work closely together. In this respect, the requirements for social skillsSkillsocial such as communication and teamwork are also increasing in the context of digitalisationDigitalisation.