Today, one of the most internationally outstanding issues is represented by the shortage of qualified workers in the transport and logistics sector.
An unfulfilled need for specific skills emerges strongly in several companies operating in this field, especially when it comes to road and rail transport operators, for whom the structural lack of specialized drivers severely limits performance and competitiveness.
With a view to identifying operational solutions to this problem, CFLI organized a workshop dedicated to “Human resources and intermodality: needs and perspectives” on May 25th, involving numerous speakers who contributed both to outline the new trends of the labor market, and to emphasize the difficulties that companies encounter in finding human resources in a post-pandemic and changed geopolitical scenario.
In Italy, the cargo rail market recorded significant growth in 2021, also thanks to the operative capacity that the same sector maintained during the period of the pandemic. However, this growth is not supported by a sufficient availability of new qualified operating workers. Similarly, the current incentives issued at national level in European regions are not sufficient to overcome the structural shortage of drivers which is further increased following the current geopolitical situation.
After the pandemic, the labor market in general has changed profoundly: companies require candidates with an ever-increasing number of skills, as they need new profiles capable of responding to multiple needs; on the other hand, candidates are increasingly demanding in terms of work flexibility and expectations of professional growth. Indeed, the job market is progressively moving from ‘customer driven’ to ‘candidate driven’.
In this scenario, the answers can be identified at different levels: companies must be able to propose a renewed working framework, where there are multiple opportunities for professional growth and improvement for workers, offering candidates a new storytelling capable of transferring corporate values, fundamental for the strengthening of human resources. In addition, it is essential to act on the education and training of staff, both in structured education courses and in continuous training. The model proposed by the Higher Technical Institutes (Istituti Tecnici Superiori – ITS), is a virtuous example for matching the needs of the logistics system with the ability of training institutes to prepare new candidates, finally capable of training and placing qualified workers on the market and laying the establishment of new professions. It is therefore towards the ITS model that the next EU, national and regional funds for education and training are also moving, in order to consolidate this approach for the benefit of the entire logistics sector and beyond.