The 2021 Regional Workforce Development Rankings

Joensuu, a city of 76,000 in Eastern Finland, is home to the European Forest Institute, appropriately enough. It’s also the home base of Valamis, a leading IT company specializing in the digitalization of learning. That may not be a new discipline, but it will take on greater urgency as remote learning becomes the norm. The company has 10 offices worldwide. In September 2020, Valamis published results from its second annual global report, The State of Learning and Development in the Workplace. More than 3,000 people were surveyed in more than 20 industries from entry-level to C-Suite executives in organizations from Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, the U.S., and the UK.

Findings from the survey show that roughly 93% of respondents globally believe updating knowledge and skills are important to an organization’s success, and more than 50% of executives and the C-Suite value skills development as extremely important to an organization’s future success, according to a report summary. Although the importance of learning and development has been recognized in every country surveyed, over 74% of respondents believe their organizations are actively encouraging the workforce to develop their skills, and nearly 56% of respondents had a dedicated person or team responsible for learning and development at their organization.

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