Kristina Björn led the workshop together with Anna Land and Gunn-Mari Löfdahl.
How to build competence in the best way? And what do municipalities, entrepreneurs and other actors need? That was dicussed at Mistra InfraMaint’s recent workshop.
Reducing the current lack of skills is one of the cornerstones of the research programme.
Knowledge and professional competence has a need for continuous development to keep up to date, especially in areas where technology and methodology advance fast.
The starting point for continuous competence development is to capture and compile stakeholders’ needs for knowledge building and skills enhancement. Such a roadmap for skills development will be developed in sub-project 3.1a and the workshop on May 10 was part of that work.
Municipalities dominate
19 persons participated on site, or via Skype. Among other things, they were given access to the results of survey on competence building that has been carried out within the project.
A total of 23 actors were interviewed, most (15) from municipalities. Others represented regions, contractors and technology consultants, among others. The business areas were ws, road or both – in small municipalities, one and the same person often has several roles.
Wide needs
The basic questions were what new or strengthened skills that staff need today, how, where and when it is best to learn and what skills you want from new staff.
In general, the respondents express that there is a broad need for expertise throughout the organisation, but planning and long-term assessments are particularly central roles.
One problem is that competence today is often experience-based and personal. But how do you increase skills in the organisation? Several of the interviewees were skeptical of self-study and web-based education. They prefer courses with others, preferably without having to make long trips or be absent from regular tasks for a long time. Meetings face-to-face, networking and collaboration feel important.
Wanted: “Academic doer”
One question was who recruiters would love to hire. The answer became an “academic doer”, a person who combines theory and practice, can see how details affect the whole and have implemented digitalised systems that has created benefits.
The results of the survey will now be compiled and supplemented to result in real plans for how and with what we work best to contribute to building competence.