Launch of our new Nordplus project - A Lifetime of Learning
On 18 September 2025, I participated in the Launch of the new Nordplus project - A Lifetime of Learning NPAD-2025/10300 together with our Nordic colleagues in Copenhagen, DK. Partners are Denmark (Jörgen Grubbe & Hans Jørgen Knudsen), Sweden (Ebba Ossiannilsson), Finland (Piia Keihäs, Kaisa Honkonen), Iceland (Hrobjartur Arnason), and Norway, who is the coordinator (Eleni Simeou Askim and the Project Manager Audhild Håvaldsrud)

A huge amount of skills development takes place in the workplace every day. This project will allow us to show how this happens in our five countries (Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, and Finland). The project will focus on two sectors where the need for skills development and employees is high - healthcare and the technology sector.

If you are a company or an education/learning partner in the healthcare or technology sector operating in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, or Norway, and would like to showcase your work in learning and development, get in touch!
Ebba Ossiannilsson

SUMMARY

This project brings together partners from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden to

map learning methodologies in workplace settings, focusing on the healthcare and technology

sectors. By identifying and analyzing real-world cases, the project aims to document how skills

are developed in work environments—both through partnerships with educational institutions

and via internal training developed by the organisation itself. The findings will provide insights

into best practices, trends, and effective learning methods that can be adopted across the

Nordic region.

The project is relevant given current pressing challenges such as labor and skills shortages

caused by aging populations and rapidly evolving job requirements. By exploring work-based

learning models, the project seeks to document workforce adaptability and productivity and

share this knowledge. Through structured interviews, workshops, and conferences, the team

will collect and compare data across the five countries. Results will be disseminated through

webinars, reports, and a final publication, ensuring that findings are accessible to policymakers,

businesses, and educational institutions.

Background

The Nordic countries face challenges due to ageing populations, declining birth rates and

shortages of both labour and competencies. Up-skilling and re-skilling workers through

workplace learning is crucial to retaining talent, increasing productivity, and filling skills gaps.

The need for lifelong learning (skills, knowledge, and attitudes) is prevalent in the healthcare

and technology sectors. These two sectors are experiencing labour and skills shortages

across the Nordics and internationally. Therefore, maintaining productive workplaces and

simultaneously ensuring quality skills development is essential. Learning and competence

development in the workplace can no longer be something that only big multinational

workplaces invest in.

In the technology sector, changes happen faster than skills can be developed. In healthcare,

we do not have enough personnel to cover the population's needs. We, however, believe

that training, suitable methods for competence development, and education are keys to

addressing these challenges. Ensuring that suitable methods for work-based learning are of

high quality, effective and integrated will ensure that employees can gain the skills necessary

while remaining productive.

Nordic/Baltic added value

This project builds on the NordPlus priority of lifelong learning and the tradition of Nordic

cooperation projects, enabling cross-border learning and the exchange of practice.

NPAD-2025/10300 Page 4 (14) Submitted - 03-Feb-2025

The countries in this project, have to a high degree similar societal structures and face similar

labour and skills shortages. There are also similarities in political and societal dialogue around

the need for lifelong learning and how significant the workplace is as a learning arena. There is

also extensive pre-existing cross-border business and cooperation. Our previous experiences

show that the Nordic countries have such close relations, both formal and informal, that it is

possible to identify trends in work-based learning and training that are relevant across country

borders.

Defining effective and sustainable learning methods in the workplace, with quality as a central

factor, will facilitate a transnational exchange of experiences, promising practices, and valuable

knowledge.

Activities

The project team will have five physical working meetings during the project's lifetime. At each

meeting, the partners will coordinate the mapping and analysis of findings. Whenever we

have the first intermediate results from our investigations, expectedly after three months, we

will arrange workshops or conferences directly connected to the meetings to disseminate the

results and create a dialogue (quality control) concerning the identified experiences with key

stakeholders that we identify during the scoping phase of the project.

Webinars will be arranged between the meetings to broaden the dialogue about the learning

methods and discuss the project experiences. Before, between, and after the meetings and

seminars, partners’ experiences from previous Nordic projects and collected experience will be

incorporated into the project website, containing Nordic network for Lifelong Learning (NLL) web

page blogs, descriptions, analyses, and the final publication. For the preparation and marketing

of the seminars, 8 -10 webinars will be held and recorded, thus allowing asynchronous access

to the material, projects, and experiences

#Lifelong learning hashtag #Work integrated learning hashtag #Healthcare hashtag #Technology