What’s the Good Practice about?
The practice is all about hands-on learning in the workplace, specifically in recruiting and eventual hiring of new people after their “test period” at the company Solar Finland. The participants develop new skills, such as design skills, teamwork, technical and practical skills since the hands-on education approach and the mentoring with inside “educators”.
About the company: Solar Finland is a solar energy company based in Salo Finland. Its scope of business includes manufacturing of solar panels, sales and installation of solar energy systems, investments on solar energy production companies and sales of automatic PV-module production lines. All in all, Solar Finland has wider range of products and services on the solar energy sector than any other company in Finland. Together with its affiliates it is one of the most significant solar energy companies in the country. Solar Finland currently has four affiliate companies (Salo Solar Ltd, Salo Tech Ltd, Salo Automation Ltd and Salo Energy Ltd), each functioning in their respective areas of the solar business. At the end of 2022 Solar Finland and its affiliates together have a staff of around 50-60 people.
Why implementing the Good Practice? What are the special features of the Good Practice?
In implementing the practice you can ensure that you get the best talent possible to be hired for the jobs. The practice is local and specifically meant for our factory and installations. In general, practical hands-on learning is not region dependent and can be applied everywhere. When we started, we would typically get 10-20% of the new recruits to stay at the jobs, and/or even to actually be able to do the work. Now we have nearly a 90% success in recruiting.
In the practice we utilize the traditional master-apprentice approach, which makes the practice very practical and focused only on the needed skills for the job in question. With this approach both parties benefit, the company by seeing that the new workers can do the job, and the prospect employee that they can and actually are willing to do the job for long term.
What are the challenges in implementing the Good Practice?
What’s the key for success?
There are no big challenges, but a financial risk is always there, if the worker does not stay in the company after training.