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Upskilling and increasing the competence of production workers at Bisca in Denmark

The Danish company Bisca is a manufacturer for biscuits and cakes with around 460 employees. Bisca is located in an area offering only few alternative jobs. The company’s workforce includes many low skilled and unskilled workers.

The Danish company Bisca is a manufacturer for biscuits and cakes with around 460 employees. Bisca is located in an area offering only few alternative jobs. The company’s workforce includes many low skilled and unskilled workers.

Beginning of 2015, the company launched a training and upskilling programme with the aim to train all unskilled production workers to skilled level workers. The programme is a joint initiative of the local cooperation committee with participation of employees and management.

Objective

Creation of attractive jobs and upskilling of unskilled and low skilled workers to skilled workers. Concept of the training and upskilling programme:

  • The programme is implemented in cooperation with the local training institution CELF (Centre for Vocational Education Lolland Falster) and is based on a mix of a “on-the-job” training phase and an educational phase at school.
  • All production workers of Bisca are currently participating in a training programme. Aim is to train the workers to successfully handle more than one machine.
  • Within a two-year period, the entire workforce (about 170 production workers) shall receive four weeks training at school combined with “on- the-job” training.
  • During their training phase at school, the employees are replaced by replacement workers in a rotation project.

 

Outcome and achievements

Successful upskilling of 15 production workers from unskilled to skilled workers. These 15 have already completed their formal education (as of August 2015).

Costs

The municipality covers the salary costs for the replacement workers in the rotation project. In Denmark, education and also vocational schools are publically funded.