Vocational training should fortify the ability of workers to handle a wide range of different jobs, while university education should be honed to ensure that training and teaching coincide more closely with the forest industry’s future needs, according to the Finnish Forest Industries Federation. “The forest industry’s vocational and university teaching should come more closely in line with expertise requirements. In particular these constitute preparedness, together with group work and foreman skills, as well as the ability to extend personal expertise and transfer from one job to another,” Forest Industries Federation Managing Director, Anne Brunila, said last month.

“An understanding of the customer’s business remains a fundamental requirement of successful corporate activities.” The worker of the future in the forest sector will be capable of handling the processes, engaging in fruitful cooperation, and working easily within a group. They will have the basic requirements in chemistry and physics, in addition to good work management and foreman’s skills. They will be familiar with the products and customer requirements and understand the economic bases. Additionally, it is proposed graduates will possess adequate language skills to enable them to survive in an internationalising operating environment. Employees with such a broad array of capabilities will assist in the smooth running of the mill and work safely and efficiently in all kinds of work situations and tasks. Finland’s forest cluster’s research strategy lays down the outlines for university and college instruction and the development of teaching programmes. The research strategy calls for the different science disciplines and areas of expertise to be innovatively combined while at the same time making use of new scientific fields. The forest industry also hopes for design and modern wood architecture to be included in training. “University education needs to be supplemented by customer orientation, business acumen in the sector, entrepreneurship, and an overall grasp of business principles”, Anne Brunila added. Brunila said the importance of expertise and training as success factors will continue to grow. Persistent, systematic work in training is necessary to ensure competitiveness in the forest industry.