Businesses unite to create jobs – practical trials launched in three cities

Contrary to popular belief, businesses have plenty of unfulfilled or outstanding work and staffing needs. In fact, Finland may have as many as 360,000 “latent” jobs. In an employment services practical trial developed by Sitra, businesses jointly advertise their hidden jobs and incomplete work, while the role of the TE Offices (Finland’s network of offices for jobseekers) and local authorities is to identify the most suitable employees for them. The trial will be first launched in the the Tampere region, Turku and the Helsinki capital region.

In a business-driven employment service model, the traditional approach to finding employment gets turned on its head: businesses identify their labour needs both individually and jointly, while TE Offices and local authorities search among the jobseekers to find the employees who best meet those needs. The objective is to make recruitement easier and create new jobs. Nearly one hundred employers, including small and large enterprises, from Tampere, Turku and the Helsinki capital region have signed up for the trial.

“The feedback we have received from businesses is: ‘Yes, we have work that no one is doing, but we don’t have the time to explore all the options for finding the right person for the job’. There may be as many as 360,000 latent jobs in Finland, and this is our way of bringing them out of hiding,” says Sitra Senior Advisor Mikko Kesä.

According to the employment service statistics of the Ministry of Employment and the Economy, there are nearly 30,000 open vacancies in Finland. But that is not the whole truth: only approximately one in three open vacancies are published via the authorities’ channels. Furthermore, in three quarters of the cases, the recruitment process does not include using a public job advertisement. Then there are also hidden jobs, where the interests of the employee and the employer converge before any official recruitment process begins.

“The flexibility and ease of recruiting increases the demand for labour. We Finns strongly believe that further education or employment subsidies are the key to re-entering working life after a period of unemployment. In reality, these measures are only effective when the employee’s competences and the recruitment service provided meet the employer’s actual need at the right time,” Kesä explains.

A business cluster can hire shared employees

If the staffing need is seasonal, for example, businesses think very carefully about the financial side of recruiting. Unfulfilled staffing needs wither with time; the existing staff do the work or the tasks are simply left undone.

In the new model, employers operating in networks such as co-operatives or pools are in a mutually beneficial position, as they can jointly search for shared employees or exchange seasonal workers among themselves.

For the employees, a network of employers offers versatile opportunities and a real chance to showcase their skills. Instead of writing job applications, employees can focus on demonstrating their abilities the best they can, and references can be shared among the whole network.

Testing the model through practical trials

The business-driven employment service model will be piloted in three separate projects. The Turku employers’ association for medium-sized and large employers (Turun työnantajain yhdistys ry) is working on a new business-driven employment service concept under the working title “DuuniRuukki”.

“The goal is to utilise modern digital tools to promote the quick and easy matching of labour supply with staffing needs,” says the association’s chair, engineering entrepreneur Tomi Taipale.

In Tampere, a network of 70 employers has been compiled in co-operation with local authorities to work more closely with various employment activities, while in the Helsinki capital region, large employers are jointly developing an operating model for the provision of internal, personalised job training for businesses.

“At the moment, personalised induction and close monitoring is not feasible even in large businesses due to the immediate supervisors’ time pressure and heavy workload. Large employers are eager for some assistance from the public sector in this, so that jobs could be found more efficiently for young people, immigrants and the unemployed,” says Manager of Educational Affairs Markku Lahtinen of the Helsinki Region Chamber of Commerce.

“All in all, for the most part, public assistance and aid should be allocated directly to workplaces and various unnecessary stages should be eliminated from the employment process. If successful, these three trials can serve as an example for other cities, providing the tools for measures such as developing the legislation and the operating environment,” Kesä adds.

For further information, please contact:

Mikko Kesä, Senior Advisor, Sitra, tel. +358 294 618 291, mikko.kesa@sitra.fi

Tomi Taipale, Chairman of the Board of Turun Työnantajain Yhdistys, entrepreneur (Kaarjoki Oy), tel. +358 500 838 553, tomi.taipale@kaarjoki.fi

Markku Lahtinen, Manager of Educational Affairs, Helsinki Region Chamber of Commerce, +358 9 2286 0351, markku.lahtinen@chamber.fi

Pasi Järvilehto, CEO, Pajakon Oy (Tampere), tel. +358 500 73 922, pasi.jarvilehto@pajakon.fi

Taru Keltanen, Specialist, Communications, Sitra, tel. +358 40 674 3246, taru.keltanen@sitra.fi

Sitra’s Transformations of work focus area devises new ideas and tests operating models that promote more efficient matching of the labour supply with job opportunities. In addition, we encourage Finns to develop competences required in the new labour market and in the new working life.