Training that is closer, more accessible and more effective
In recent years, companies and training providers have increased their investments in skills development, aware that keeping people and organizations up to date is essential to remain competitive in an ever-evolving job market.
Perhaps you too have noticed an obstacle that continues to undermine the effectiveness of many training projects: accessibility.
In 2024, only 10.4% of Italians aged between 25 and 64 took part in continuing education activities, an even lower percentage than the 11.6% recorded the previous year. The challenge, therefore, is not only to design high-quality courses, but also to make them genuinely accessible.
When training requires travel, long journeys or complex organization, participation decreases, while costs, time commitments and operational difficulties increase.
Would you know where to organize a course and bring it as close as possible to the people who need to attend it?
Regional imbalances across Italy
Italy is marked by significant regional disparities that directly affect people’s ability to take part in training programmes.
More than 13.3 million people, equal to 22.6% of the population, live in inland areas, where reaching services, training centres and major cities requires considerably longer travel times.
Digital skills also remain unevenly distributed, while around one in four adults has limited literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills. In a country with these characteristics, asking people to travel in order to access training risks widening inequalities rather than reducing them.
Businesses also need distributed training
According to Unioncamere, nearly 48% of Italian companies struggle to find the professional profiles they need. Closing this gap means bringing training closer to local production areas and adapting it to the needs of local supply chains and the companies operating within them.
The needs of a major industrial region such as Lombardy are very different from those of a region with a dispersed population or a high concentration of inland areas. For this reason, a truly effective training network cannot be concentrated only in major cities, but must provide operational locations across the entire country, bringing training opportunities closer to the people and businesses that need them.
The solution to this problem already exists
- Lombardy, Lazio, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna have a high demand for training due to their strong concentration of businesses, advanced services and specialized manufacturing. - By contrast, Campania, Apulia, Calabria and Sicily have lower employment rates, lower participation in continuing education and less widespread digital skills. - In regions such as Abruzzo, Molise, Basilicata, Sardinia, Umbria and Marche, the main issue is not the level of demand, but the distance from essential services and the geographical dispersion of the population.
In all these cases, an operational location is not simply a classroom in which to hold a course, but a local hub capable of addressing different needs and creating genuinely accessible training programmes.
NOTONLYDESK already provides more than 235 operational locations across every Italian region, offering verified spaces that include workstations, meeting rooms, private offices and areas dedicated to workshops and events.
This allows training providers, companies and organizations to plan activities close to participants while maintaining a single operating model on a national scale. The network makes it possible to manage bookings, access and space usage through centralized tools, simplifying the organization of distributed training programmes without having to build a new infrastructure each time.
The skills required by the market are changing rapidly, but the opportunity to acquire them still depends partly on where people live and work. Bringing training closer to people means increasing participation opportunities, supporting companies in developing their workforce’s skills and helping to reduce the regional inequalities that continue to limit the growth of many areas.
NOTONLYDESK, NOD, provides a single dashboard for managing coworking spaces throughout Italy, using Nodey digital tokens to book workstations, meeting rooms or private offices. If your organization uses remote or hybrid working, this is relevant to you.
Discover how NOD works and activate a trial for your team.
Does your training really reach people where they work?
With a network of over 235 operational locations across Italy, NOTONLYDESK enables you to organize courses, workshops and corporate academies close to your employees, reducing travel, organizational costs and barriers to participation.
Coworking and workspaces starting from €22 per dayWith NOTONLYDESK you can book coworking spaces, workstations, private offices, and meeting rooms throughout Italy, with solutions starting from €22 + VAT per day and with no city-specific surcharges.
= 1 NODEY =
1 DESK WORKSTATION for the entire day, per employee1 MEETING ROOM for 1 hour, per employee
