On May 20, BeComE University partners and companies met to discuss the project’s updates. Urve Venesaar led the meetings and the development of the work.
In the first part, the university partners updated the different work packages. We analyzed the implementation activities of the workpackages, the work to be submitted to academic conferences and the ongoing process of the dissemination activities.
In the second part of the meeting, we discussed how companies’ operations relate to the project goals. After a short introduction, Taina Civil presented the case of Finland in which she gave a few examples of how the Finnish companies have fulfilled the WP4 task of making companies more expansive learning environments. She also explained how the company processes and developmental work they have done relate to the five WLE (Workplace as a learning environment) themes named 1) Challenging and developing work tasks, 2) Participation and understanding of the workplace, 3) Recognition as an expert and learner, 4) Resources to help learning and 5) Congruence with organizational goals. The Finnish companies’ main processes focused on were mentor-mentee-programme, an internal education center for career and skill development and a monetary reward system for employees. The negotiations on how to proceed with developing the internal education center are still ongoing.
After presenting the Finnish companies’ cases as concrete examples of WP4 tasks and development work, Petri Nokelainen discussed concrete recommendations for companies on how they could develop their organizations as better learning environments that would consider the abovementioned WLE themes. The recommendations included suggestions for employee reward processes, offering plenty of resources for learning, making the company goals and values clear, and offering opportunities for job crafting and work tasks that are appropriately challenging. After the presentation, we allowed time for questions and discussions, which was insightful and prolific.
Participants: Jukka Siren, Carolina Ponte, Allessandro Iorio, Angelo Riviezzo, Bernardo Ferreira, Filomena Pagnozzi, Gilda Antonelli, Henrique Duarte, Katrin Arvola, Marianne Kallaste, Urve Venesaar, Marina Kaas, Petri Nokelainen, Szymon Midera, Ulvi Kala, Taina Civil