Espoo to offer municipal employment trials with the cities of Helsinki and Vantaa

The social initiative will start in spring 2020

The Finnish City of Espoo is preparing for municipal employment trials with its networks - the cities of Helsinki and Vantaa, TE Services and ELY Centres, announced the municipality in a press release for TheMayor.EU

The Finnish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment will start municipal employment trials in spring next year. The aim is to strengthen the role of municipalities as providers of employment services. Human resources and employment appropriations will be allocated to the municipal employment trials.

The Head of Employment Services at the City of Espoo underlined: “We already have a strong culture of working together in a networked manner. We have successfully developed new kinds of services for our clients and reinvented existing ones to serve their needs better."

Peer mentoring represents an effective way of deepening highly educated job-seekers' understanding of their own expertise and ways to market it. Working in a group inspires people to try new ways to look for a job and encourages them to actively expand their networks.

The driving force behind the service is a joint project of the capital region cities called Korko – Value of Academics. The practices and services linked to the project will be integrated into the employment services in Espoo at the turn of the year.

The Employment Corner is a low-threshold guidance service for job-seekers over 30 years. Advice for job-seekers, training tips, opportunities to meet employers - all of this located in the Iso Omena shopping centre.

Further education and training for programmers

A lack of skilled programmers has slowed down the development of ICT companies in Espoo. At the same time, there are unemployed IT experts who have difficulties in finding employment, for example, due to outdated skills.

For the past two years, Espoo has been providing training in programming to update the participants' skills to meet the current needs of the ICT sector. The English-speaking training programme was completed by 29 highly educated people with an immigrant background, former IT sector employees going through a long period of unemployment and spouses of international experts.