The wood-working sector, which transforms roundwood to sawn timber, plywood or furniture, does not interest very much Finnish youngsters. According to a study commissioned by the Ministry of Education, on any level of the education system, too few young people complete a qualification or receive a degree in the sector. The wood-working sector needs 1,300–1,400 new employees every year, but only 700 young people complete a relevant course of study.
The qualifications and degrees gained do not match the needs of the employers, either. For example, of the young people studying for a basic vocational qualification in the wood-working sector, 90–95 percent qualify as carpenters, and only 2–3 percent as sawmill or board production operator.
The student quotas for sawmill or board production operator studies are not filled, and about half of those that start do not complete their studies, as was found in the study. What is more, the technical skills of those who do are high enough for the employers.
The salvation: apprenticeship training
The salvation of the Finnish wood-working sector have been adults, 300 of whom undergo apprenticeship training in wood working annually. In addition, 200 adults complete a vocational qualification or further and specialist qualification in the sector every year.
At Koskisen Oy, a manufacturer and marketer of wood products in Kärkölä, the human resources manager, Mr. Esa Kallinen agrees with the Ministry’s findings. The company provides in-house training to get the qualified people needed in producing plywood, other wood boards and sawn timber. “We had to start the training in order to have staff.”
Nevertheless, not all adults are interested in the wood-working sector. When the Foxconn company discontinued the production of mobile phone parts in the neighbouring municipality of Hollola, close to 600 people were left jobless. “One or two people came to work with us”, Kallinen recalls
Wood-working is not back-breaking
Kallinen and Mr. Pekka Riihimäki, human resources manager at Stora Enso Timber, agree that in general, people tend to have false conceptions about wood-working. “Nowadays the work in a sawmill is clean indoor work”, Riihimäki says. “In practice, it involves no physical effort and a saw operator needs to have IT skills”, Kallinen continues.
According to Riihimäki, one reason behind the shortage of process operators is the fragmented education: the vocational institutions are small and do not have the resources to buy up-to-date machines.
”The vocational institutions should also cooperate more with companies. Moreover, the schools do not provide an accurate picture of working life; it is not as hierarchical as the teaching in schools. A plywood process operator has to know about maintenance and repair. They have to master several stages of the process and want to develop professionally”, Kallinen says.
”Only about ten percent of the work is routine; meaning that we could pick anyone and quickly train them to do it. All the rest requires skills which you can’t expect an apprentice to have. For example, the work of a veneer cutter is as demanding as a foreman’s job”, Kallinen explains.
500 vocational examinations at Koskisen
Koskisen Oy has systematically trained its employees for nearly two decades. This has proved profitable in several ways.
500 vocational examinations have been completed in this company that employs 1,200 people, job satisfaction and vocational identity have improved. Absences due to sickness are below the sector average, and personnel turnaround is only five percent per year. Thanks to the skilled labour, quality has improved.
”Instead of laying people off, we train them. In the beginning people muttered about not being able to go ice fishing, but not any more”, says Kallinen, whose achievements in the field of training have won national recognition.
One has to know both the wood and the processing
Riihimäki says that in the future, the sector needs skilled people who know both the properties of wood and its processing.
“Young people are attracted by the construction sector, but not by wood processing. In the future, producers of prefabricated wooden construction elements are going to need carpenters, for example, who understand the behaviour of wood”, says Ms. Tuulia Taanila, coordinator at Woodpoint, a development centre for the wooden house sector in Ostrobothnia.
”Prefabricated house companies deliver houses on the turnkey principle. The operators have to know about furnishing, insulation and many other things besides”, she says.
Kallinen thinks that apprenticeship training does not receive enough attention from the media, though it is perfect from the employers’ point of view. Riihimäki affirms that those coming into the sector as adults like it: “They have been our salvation.”
”If the annual volume of wood felled in Finnish forests is going to increase by 15 million cubic metres, well then, we are going to need people to process it”, sums up Kallinen.
By Krista Kimmo, Kärkölä