Education
Articles on the role of education in the work environment.
Continuing education gets huge push from Danish government and social partners
The Danish government and the social partners have agreed to spend nearly 2.5 billion Danish kroner (€335m) on continuing education for more workers. The agreement has broad political backing, but one labour market expert wonders whether it goes far enough.
The necessary skills at the right time
Finding a good match is not always easy, especially in the labour market. As the labour market is transforming at lightning speed, the need for skills increases. The opportunity to get adult and continuing education becomes equally important. But how to do it? The Nordic Labour Journal looks at possibilities and practice in the Nordic region.
“Only the labour market knows which skills are needed”
Swedish employers are in desperate need of people to fill positions within many different occupations. Meanwhile, more than 340,000 people are registered with the employment service. The problem is that the job seekers’ knowledge often does not match the needs of the employer.
Fitness industry seeks millennium-old skills – and knowledge of how to become bootylicious
More than four million Nordic citizens are members of gyms like Sats Elixia. As a result, the demand for skilled instructors is considerable. We joined one student of theology, one accountant and one brand expert in their spinning, yoga and shape classes.
How Sats Elixia works to secure the right competency
Competency is a moving target, since the knowledge needed to manage a job always changes. In the fitness and exercise industry this is doubly true. Not only does one trend replace another. Competency also often means knowing the right movements and how to make people move.
How do you motivate adult Danes to retrain?
The Danish adult and continuing education system is being reorganised in order to get more Danes to choose to take part in continuing training. One in three say they are not interested.
Older colleagues’ experience needed as the 80’s generation take over the Viking ferries
Viking Line is facing a real challenge. The largest age group onboard their Baltic Sea passenger ferries is 50 to 59 year olds. When they retire, a big chunk of competence disappears. The company has decided to treat this as a challenge and not a problem.
Restaurants break with old language norm – English makes an entrance
Finnish restaurateurs are worried about the lack of Finnish-speaking waiters. As a result, more and more restaurants now seek English-speaking staff. Meanwhile, trade unions sound a warning that many young people are leaving the trade because of low pay and a lack of workplace training opportunities.
A Nordic drive for lifting competencies
A changing labour market always needs new competency. Employees and employers must stay up to date. Workplaces from fitness centres to fisheries need to secure the knowledge which new developments demand, whether it is digitalisation or yoga. All the Nordic countries are looking at how to organise their adult and continuing education.
Icelandic continuing education: “Employees became more interested in their jobs"
One in three adult Icelanders had no more than an elementary school education in the year 2000, and got no continuing education through their work. Since then, the social partners have developed a learning centre for further training of people with lower education levels. This has helped reduce the share of lower educated. It used to be 33 percent, now it is 25 percent of the low-educated workforce.
NIVA Education introduces online courses
NIVA Education has started offering online courses in various topics to do with working environments and safety. “The best thing about these courses is that I can go back and listen to a lecture again and again. You always notice something new,” says Ásta Snorradóttir, is a lecturer in occupational rehabilitation at the at the University of Iceland.
Camilla Stoltenberg: Nordics should cooperate to improve young people’s mental health
The Nordic countries should get together and create ambitious goals to improve young people’s psychological well-being, argues Camilla Stoltenberg, professor and Director-General of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
Mandatory continuing and further education – possible in the Nordic region?
“The process is underway,” comments the former Danish government minister and EU Commissioner Poul Nielsson. In November 2014 he was asked to review the Nordic cooperation on labour market issues. At the labour ministers’ meeting in Helsinki he presented his proposals for reforms and got reactions from the ministers.
Birgitta Forsström – The fresh thinking Nordic region’s working environment director
Good leadership is crucial for well-being at work thinks NIVA’s new director, Birgitta Forsström. NIVA now offers courses in health promoting leadership and diversity leadership in addition to more traditional themes. This is how she wants to create new Nordic arenas for training in the working environment area.
Cross-border education at the Cap of the North extended
Since 1991 Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian youths on at the Cap of the North have been able to meet and get vocational training under the auspices of Utbildning Nord (Education North) — a unique cross-border education strategy. On 19 October the scheme was extended until 2019.
Nordic comparative report: Youths loosing their footing
The share of youths who loose their footing is increasing in all of the Nordic countries. Although youth unemployment is a major problem, decision makers should make a more concerted effort to identify and support those most at risk.
Basic skills - use them or lose them
The results from the first ever Nordic PIAAC report are both exciting and frightening. It shows a surprising number of people have such poor basic skills that it affects their chances in working and public life, and it does not improve with age either.
Nordics: Surprisingly many struggle with literacy and numeracy
The challenge facing politicians is helping two million adults who lack the necessary skills for working and social life to secure a chance to develop, says Anders Rosdahl. He is a senior research fellow at the Danish National Centre for Social Research, and the Danish representative in the network which has just presented the Nordic PIAAC report.
New comparative Nordic research measures adult competencies
For the first time ever there is a Nordic version of the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, PIAAC. PIAAC was first published in 2013. The survey comprises comparative data from 24 countries.
Workplace learning depends on what we learned in school
Our capacity to learn at work is to a large degree dependent on what we have learned in school, and working life cannot fully compensate for differences in formal schooling. That is according to a new Nordic survey which builds on the OECD’s large skills survey PIAAC. Many women in a gender segregated labour market are even loosing their numeracy skills.
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