Fimpec encourages and supports its employees in developing their professional skills.
Continuous updating and development of skills are essential today, especially in Fimpec’s strategic focus areas, such as clean transition projects and services for energy-intensive sectors. Fimpec motivates its employees to enhance their professional competence and aims to provide an environment that facilitates this. Competence Development Manager Pekka Silvennoinen explains in his article what Fimpec’s commitment to development means in practice and the role of Fimpec Academy.
Currently, Fimpec employs over 440 experts, recognized as top professionals in their fields. The company is perceived as an attractive workplace offering opportunities for engaging tasks and personal skill development. We are committed to maintaining this culture by investing in our staff’s professional growth and education, ensuring we serve our clients using the latest knowledge and methods.
We constantly think about how to encourage and enable our employees to develop their skills in a way that suits our workplace culture. This involves high professionals whose learning needs are highly individual. Our learning policy is based on a strong belief in the individual’s responsibility, motivation, and desire to learn.
This means every employee is primarily responsible for their own learning and skill development, considering their interests and career development goals. As a company, we want to encourage and support each individual’s active learning. We explore various training and learning courses to enable every employee to develop their skills and achieve their professional goals. To this end, we have established the Fimpec Academy, among other initiatives.
Another key aspect of our learning policy is fostering a learning organization culture. We aim to create and maintain a culture where learning and knowledge sharing are everyday activities. This involves encouraging open communication, information sharing, and collaboration across teams and departments. The idea is that every employee can mentor others. To achieve this goal, we continually develop coaching and mentoring. This is crucial as, according to the well-established 70:20:10 model by Robert Eichinger and Michael Lombardo, the majority of employee development and learning occurs through work, interaction, and collaboration with others. Peer support from colleagues is essential and a hallmark of how we operate at Fimpec.
Fimpec Academy Facilitates Learning Pathways
The aforementioned Fimpec Academy supports our learning policy. It plays a role in implementing our learning policy on a practical level, including continuous assessment of our staff’s learning needs and searching for and informing them about relevant training opportunities. When necessary, Fimpec Academy also organizes customized training for the whole of Fimpec and various organizational needs if there are widespread needs. For example, a project management training course was conducted in the fall of 2023.
The focus has been on independently completed courses, which are widely available, ranging from short targeted training to large learning packages. Our staff can undertake these to develop their professional competencies. Identifying good courses and their scheduling has been a challenge, which is one reason the Fimpec Academy was established. Feedback indicates that the threshold for participating in training has been lowered when we can provide this information. Our staff has taken advantage of training in clean transitions, leadership, and mentoring, but a wide range of courses is continuously available, including on topics related to occupational well-being.
In addition to the training selection and provision by Fimpec Academy, self-development and its goals are a central topic in performance discussions between supervisors and employees.
Collaboration with Universities Benefits All Parties
Part of our learning-related activities includes collaboration with universities. Fimpec traditionally offers internships and thesis positions to students from various disciplines to support their graduation. We also visit educational institutions to share insights into what working life is like in a specialist organization like ours. Additionally, some of our experts lecture on their specialties at various institutions.
From our staff’s perspective, participating in educational collaboration offers an opportunity to expand their expertise into a new area, which involves sharing knowledge and evaluating their own competencies and work-life perceptions. From my own experience, I can say it’s exciting and rewarding.
The author, Pekka Silvennoinen, is a seasoned Automation Engineer who became passionate about studying to become a professional teacher at the Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences (Jamk) Professional Teacher Education while working at Fimpec. He now serves as the Competence Development Manager of Fimpec Academy and also teaches at Jamk.
For more information
Pekka Silvennoinen
Competence Development Manager, Fimpec Academy
Phone: +358 50 4639 640
Email: pekka.silvennoinen@fimpec.com
