To maintain their employability, SMEs workers must be involved in lifelong learning paths career guidance and career counseling services can play a crucial role in supporting decisions about further learning of SMEs workers. Therefore, the output is a package of guidance and career development (CGD) services directed to SMEs workers.

It is a set of practical tools that the career guidance and development operators, the VET trainers, and the HR specialists can use when providing career guidance and development services addressed to SMEs low-skilled workers. It also provides supportive guidance on the enabling skills and job profiles that will be required by SMEs.

The package is made of different components:

• Service Design Handbook containing the description of the services (assessment, self-assessment, professional self-awareness journey, career plan, etc).
• Guidelines for the Use of the Tools included in the toolkit;
• Professional Operators Tools containing 10 practical activities and their relative ppt presentations, the self-development notebook;
• Future Competencies containing a collection of enabling competencies for the future;
• Handbook about Advantages to Have Dynamic Workers That Develop Themselves addressed to the SMEs;
• The methodology containing a short theoretical background to career guidance aimed at SME workers.

How to use the package?

The package is conceived to involve the workers in a guidance pathway. The career guidance and development operators, VET trainers, and HR specialists can use the package according to the following steps:

1. Understand the nature and the type of designed service in the Service Design Handbook.
2. Understand the proposed guidance pathway described in the Guidelines.
3. Test on their own the 10 activities included in the Professional Operators Tools understanding the mechanics, the logic and the rules.
4. Study the presentation called Introduction to the Pathway and create the proper pathway taking inspiration from slide no. 21.
5. Involve a group of workers in a brief meeting aiming to present the pathway using the presentation called Introduction to the Pathway.
6. In each meeting follow the Guidelines, propose the practical activities, support the workers in the implementation of the activities and in finding their own insights and support the workers to fill in the notebook.
7. Use the documentation on the PESTEL analysis and the future skill needs emerged from the Roadmap process.
8. Accompany the workers until the creation of a personal development plan.

The most important thing is to allow each worker to reach the results they can get and to use their wisdom to do a great job.

If there are workers that wish to further educate themselves, an employer should appreciate this worker initiative. Some may argue that if an employer has educated workers, s/he needs to pay higher wages to them. In some cases, it is true, that the higher the education, the higher the wage. However, the benefits of working with educated workers are much higher and they cannot be outweighed by the amount of money paid on wages.