Anticipating the future needs

Skilled professionals are needed the most Basic professional skills are highly regarded by EK’s member companies. Half of the new employees that are hired by EK’s member companies are expected to have a degree from a vocational institute. One in five new recruits are expected to have a degree from a polytechnic and one in ten a university degree.

Intelligence to support decision-making

EK carries out annual personnel and education surveys among its member companies. These surveys provide intelligence that can be utilised by companies and to support the debate and decision-making regarding labour and education policies.

The information obtained through these personnel and education surveys can be used, for example, to better focus education on the expertise needed by companies. 

EK has had two long-term foresighting projects: Education Intelligence (pdf)  and Services 2020 (pdf). Both projects were completed in 2006. There successor is Oivallus.

Oivallus is a three year -project aiming to grasp the future. It explores the future competence needs generated by a network economy.

Oivallus - or 'Competence Needs of Learning Networks' to use its full name - is a project aiming to grasp tomorrow’s competence needs in Finland. It is based on the vision that in the future, business will increasingly be transacted in (global) networks comprising a wide range of actors.

Learning networks can be described as teams whose success depends on the synergy between the specific competence areas. Until now, the future of industry, construction and services has been evaluated in terms of individual sectors. Today, however, the sectors are networking to form close-knit clusters.

The project ends in spring 2011. It is financed by the European Social Fund, the Finnish National Board of Education and the Confederation of Finnish Industries EK.