To address these challenges and support employees in their career development, the DEVELOP project (Developing Careers through Social Networks and Transversal Competencies) has been launched. It receives funding from the European Union as part of the Horizon 2020 Program and officially started on February 1st, 2016 with a lifetime of three years.

The main objective of the DEVELOP project is to create a personalised digital-learning environment for employees to support career development and talent management in medium-sized and large companies. This "learning-environment" will focus on the assessment of transversal competencies in order to reveal transferrable skills that apply across jobs. Transversal competences are key skills that can be applied to various areas in the professional sense, but also in private life. They include management skills, the ability to solve problems, and creativity to name a few. Secondly, it will evaluate employees’ social skills, such as communication skills or personal values and highlight the need for mutual understanding and cooperation to access career-development opportunities.

Furthermore, DEVELOP aims to pioneer the use of personalised learning tools, game-based assessment, social-network analysis, and artificial intelligence (AI) within the learning environments to support career development. It will also provide guidance for the learners along their chosen career paths using existing learning resources.

To implement the project, seven partners from different European countries are collaborating closely: Trinity College Dublin (IRL), IBM Ireland Ltd (IRL), the Queen’s University Belfast (UK), Trilateral Research Limited (UK), Tracoin Quality BV (NL), GITP BV (NL), and IMC AG (GER). The partners’ extensive research and industrial experience is the basis to achieve the project goals.

The role of IMC AG in the DEVELOP project includes assistance in the development of the personalised learning environment, in particular the self-assessment tools. In the future, these are to be offered to other companies as part of DEVELOP to allow employees to reflect on their levels of knowledge and skills - and thus create a basis for further training. IMC AG will integrate the features developed into its own learning-management system, IMC Learning Suite. In addition, IMC is responsible for the dissemination and exploitation of project results through various online channels, events, and close cooperation with various stakeholders. Furthermore, IMC is responsible for the circulation and utilisation of the project results via online channels, events, and close cooperation with stakeholders.