Bringing business to the table of skills development and growth

By the time Pirita Vuorinen applied to join the ETF in 2012, her 10-year career at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) had taken her to Djibouti, the Ivory Coast, Iraq, Jordan, and Russia, and given her the opportunity first as a Junior Programme Officer before moving on to head sub-offices and focus on the regional dimensions of socio-economic development and post-conflict recovery.

Prior to fulfilling her teenage wish for a job in international cooperation, she had acquired a Master of Science in Economics from the Russian University of Economics, a DEA Sciences de Gestion from the French Institut d'Administration des Entreprises, and a Master of Arts in European Economics from the College of Europe in Belgium. 

Unexpected candidate 

Although her experience was not strictly speaking in vocational education and training (VET), it turned out that she was once again in tune with her destiny.

"It was a period when the ETF was keen to bring in non-VET experts," she explains. "They wanted people who could see the world around VET. I didn't have the standard profile, but that's exactly what they were looking for at the time." 

Telling a story 

Pirita's gateway into the ETF was the Entrepreneurial Communities project. The project she designed aimed to identify locally-based partnerships that think outside the box to unleash entrepreneurial potential, and stimulate community-level learning and job creation. The goals were identifying good practice and informing national policy debates, and the project went about it in an innovative way.

"We used videos and storytelling to show inspiring examples of how there were people already making things happen across ETF partner countries," she says. "There were some powerful messages from the grassroots level." 

 Focus on skills 

After the Entrepreneurial Communities project came to an end in 2015, Pirita began exploring a new domain that has become her field of expertise ever since. She  I wanted to explore the demand side of skills, and the link between skills, innovation, competitiveness and growth, which led her to build on smart specialisation, the EU’s approach to help Member States identify niche areas of competitive strength, bring in a demand-driven dimension to foster innovation partnerships, emphasise greater coordination between stakeholders, and align resources and strategies between private and public actors from different governance levels.

Pirita has helped the ETF to develop its approach to understanding productivity enhancing skills, which explores the implications of economic prioritisation resulting from smart specialisation for VET and skills. It engages companies and business intermediary organisations to identify current, emerging and future technology and skills needs, along with the ability of the education and training system to respond to those needs. It then connects them to peer learning partners from the EU and relevant EU funding instruments.

"We work on priority areas for competitiveness that have already been identified by the ETF's partner countries and their regions in their smart specialisation strategies as having the most competitive potential," Pirita explains. "Currently we're working with agri-food companies all across the Western Balkans, focusing on the skills that they need to prosper in the single market. We are also looking to pick up our work in Ukraine, put on hold due to the war." 

As most skills needs emerge at the intersection of old industries with digitalisation and greening, the approach is in tune with the times.

Small is beautiful 

Companies are a core element in the Skills for Smart Specialisation approach, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular.

"Education providers often focus on larger enterprises," says Pirita. "Why? Because it's easier to talk to a few large companies than a number of small companies."

But 98% or 99% of the companies operating in most of the ETF’s partner countries are domestic SMEs. They're the biggest employers. If we want to be legitimate when we're talking about skills needs, we need to talk to SMEs. Among the domestic SMEs are also the companies that are creating innovative new jobs, often at the crossroads with green and digital transitions. 

Rebuilding Ukraine 

That kind of thinking on productivity enhancing skills will prove to be vital in the post-war reconstruction effort in Ukraine, where SMEs have a key role to play.

"It's the domestic companies that will take the long-term view," Pirita explains. "SMEs are going to play a critical role in Ukraine’s economic reconstruction, not only by creating economic growth but also by providing employment opportunities. Ukraine’s recovery will require the country to sustain high levels of economic growth for decades to come. That won't happen unless local Ukrainian companies are at the centre of the reconstruction process." 

Supplying the skills to succeed 

The focus on SMEs also spotlights the opportunity for vocational institutions to effectively support SME innovation as a major condition for competitiveness. Vocational institutions are geographically more dispersed than universities. This means they are also closer to companies. Micro-companies in particular can benefit from the innovation and learning conditions of vocational institutions which can catalyse their competitiveness.