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Nordplus partner meeting for the project "A Lifetime of Learning" NPAD-2025/10300, 15 June, 2026. 

The fourth partner meeting event for the Nordplus project "A Lifetime of Learning" NPAD-2025/10300 was held online on 15th June, 2026.

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 (absent), and the Project Manager (Audhild Håvaldsrud).
 
The meeting objectives were: 

Welcome and meeting objectives:

  • Review progress since the partner meeting in Finland.
  • Share findings from interviews conducted in each country.
  • Identify emerging themes across sectors and countries.
  • Discuss project scope and analytical direction.
  • Review progress against the project plan.
  • Plan dissemination activities and preparations for the Iceland conference.
  • The meeting marked an important milestone, as interview data is now emerging to enable initial
  • Cross-country and cross-sector comparisons.

Emerging themes across countries and sectors

  • Workplace-integrated learning
  • Learning is increasingly embedded in daily work rather than organised as separate training
  • activities.
  • Peer learning
  • Learning from colleagues is consistently reported across sectors and countries.
  • Mentoring and support
  • Mentoring remains particularly important in healthcare but is also evident in other contexts.
  • Self-directed learning
  • Employees increasingly take responsibility for their own competence development.
  • Problem-based learning
  • Real work challenges frequently trigger learning and skills development.
  • AI and competence development
  • AI is influencing both learning processes and competence requirements, particularly in ICT.
  • Continuous learning culture
  • Organisations increasingly view learning as an ongoing process rather than a series of isolated
  • events.

The group agreed that these themes should be explored further through additional interviews

before firm conclusions are drawn.

The group discussed approaches for categorising and analysing workplace learning methods.

Topics included:

  •  Classification of learning methods.
  •  Development of thematic categories.
  •  Relationships between learning methods, organisational context and outcomes.
  • The role of existing research and theory in supporting analysis.

There was agreement that the final framework should support cross-country comparison, while

remaining grounded in the project’s interview data.

Overall status

The project is progressing in line with its objectives and is generating valuable insights into

workplace learning and competence development within the healthcare and technology

sectors. Even if we have not discovered many surprising or totally new methods and

experiences, we are starting to see some patterns.

Common themes are emerging across countries, particularly workplace-integrated learning,

peer learning, self-directed learning and the growing influence of AI on competence

development.

At the same time, the group recognised the need for additional interviews before stronger

conclusions could be drawn. The next phase will focus on strengthening the dataset, refining the

analytical framework, preparing dissemination activities and ensuring that the project delivers

the comparative insights and transferable knowledge outlined in the project application.

Short SUMMARY of the project

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 labour 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. Upskilling 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 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, during, and after the meetings and seminars, partners’ experiences from previous Nordic projects and collected experience will be incorporated into the project website, containing the Nordic network for Lifelong Learning (NLL) webpage 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

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