1. Introduction

Nordic citizens´ daily life is becoming increasingly digitalised (Buhl et al., 2022). Digitalisation has become a part of all aspects of living, including the working life. The accelerated technological development in the labour market today has resulted in digital competences and skills being seen as basic and essential (Anthony et al., 2019) – on par with reading and writing. 

Within a lifelong learning perspective digital competences are to be developed throughout one´s life, an aim that is mirrored in the large number of national, Nordic, and international policy initiatives on upskilling and in-service training (e.g. EU, 2020; NMR, 2020, 2021; OECD, 2020; Rolandsson et al., 2020; Thomson & Solsvik, 2020).

The concept of lifelong learning is related to how learning is taking place throughout one´s life, and how formal schooling during childhood and adolescence is only one part of this lifelong learning process (see e.g. Jarvis, 2006). A focus on adult learning and its required conditions is thus an important part of lifelong learning (e.g. Knowles, 1973). Previously, lifelong learning primarily referred to the facilitation of equal opportunities for all (despite age, class, ethnicity, income) to learn and be an active citizen (Delors, 1996), but today the concept has become an essential part of education policies as well as the skills development and labour market fields and has been adapted to convey learning throughout one´s working life – as defined by the European Council (2000a): 

… all purposeful learning activity undertaken on an ongoing basis with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and competence. Lifelong learning must become the guiding principle for provision and participation across the full continuum of learning contexts. 

The Nordic countries have a long tradition of and interest in lifelong learning and adults´ continuing opportunities for learning, including work-related competence development (Aarkrog & Wahlgren, 2012). The concept of lifelong learning in the working life applies to the creation of good opportunities for the acquisition and updating of competences and skills to ensure the best possible match with the needs of the (national and global) labour market, today and tomorrow. Even if the Nordic countries are frontrunners within digitalisation (EU, 2022; OECD, 2012), and collectively place great emphasis on digitalisation (NMR, 2020), a recent study (Slåtto, 2020) underlines a need for pan-Nordic efforts on digitalisation within education and learning, including workplace learning. This need is the focus of the present report. This report contributes to a strengthened cooperation on digital transition in Nordic working life, including the development of shared Nordic solutions. By digital transition we understand the small and large changes resulting from the implementation of digital technologies, and which may take the form of additions to existing workflows and products. Later in this report, when discussing digital transformation, we refer to a more general debate on the pervasive changes in the framework of work processes, transforming e.g. workplaces, professions, professionalism, and the working life.

This report is the second report of the research project “The role of lifelong learning for inclusion in the digital transformation” and is therefore linked to the previously prepared report that focused on digital inclusion in the Nordic countries (Buhl et al., 2022). However, the present report applies a new perspective by discussing the ways digital inclusion unfolds and reorganises the working life, compared to the previous project that focused on daily life – for instance how digitalisation changes and reorganises the contact between doctors and patients, shopping in supermarkets, parking cars, ordering a passport, or other forms of contact with the public sector.

The research project that is the framework for both reports is a part of the Nordic Network for Adult Learning (NVL), and with this second report it is connected to the new network NVL Digital – Working Life (cf. annex 1). The report presents generated learning on the digital reorganisation of the working life, including the competence development needs of employees, and recommendations for policies and practice. The report thus aims to promote (digital) learning and increased participation in Nordic working life, supporting the Nordic Council of Ministers´ objective of digitalisation benefitting all (NMR, 2020).

In the Nordic countries 99% of all companies are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), following the EU´s definition (EU, 2003) of enterprises comprising 249 or fewer employees.

Research on enterprises´ digital transition in the Nordic countries highlights that SMEs struggle to keep up with the accelerated pace of technological development (Alm et al., 2016). Consequently, SMEs are often less digitalised than larger enterprises, and the continuing upskilling of employees´ competences is slower (Fredriksson, 2012). SMEs are therefore in a precarious situation when considering the digital transition of the working life (Iris Group, 2015), which is why the present report has focused on these enterprises in our learning and recommendations. Through this focus the report´s results may contribute to narrowing the potential digital gap between SMEs and larger enterprises in the years to come.

The research project of which this report is a part thus has an empirical limitation of giving attention to SMEs, but in addition it includes two other limitations: since the manufacturing industry is subjected to larger changes than other sectors (Berger & Frey, 2016), including changes in requirements and expectations related to employees´ skills development, this industry´s skilled and unskilled employees have been selected as a target group. This means that this report primarily has a focus on employees. However, the results of the report also build on cooperation with managers, and on dialogues with employers´ associations, and are thus relevant from the employers´ perspective.

Even though the results in the report are primarily based on insights created in SMEs in the manu­facturing industry, and are therefore empirically connected to these contexts, the learning provided by the report has a wider relevance. Problems related to digitalisation of workplaces are of general interest, outside the manu­facturing industry, including for instance how the facilitation of the transition may be a part of continuing professional development, how ideas on professionalism are negotiated and renegotiated in an organisation, and how transformations are supported with employee benefit and ownership in focus.  

Digitalisation is everywhere and happens all the time. It affects and reorganises an increasing number of areas of modern society, and many established definitions of this concept convey this ever-changing and continuing dimension. Gray and Rumpe (2015, p. 1319) writes: “[digitalisation] represents the integration of multiple technologies into all aspects of daily life that can be digitized.” Here, digitization refers to the process of making analogue information digital, while the concept of digitalisation is linked to the transformation of potentially all social spheres. In short, the comprehensive change that this integration results in, by transforming the contact between humans and machines, and thus the ways people live, work, and communicate. 

Within the manufacturing sector digital transformation is linked to the transfer from automation (industry 3.0) to integration of digital processes and physical production (4.0), with an aim to make products while supported by intelligent, co-thinking production and service networks (Technological Institute, 2017).  Recently, the European Commission submitted a complementary and value-based approach to digital transformation (Breque et al., 2021). The approach is named industry 5.0 and includes employee well-being and sustainability as central perspectives in the transformation.  This theoretical framework points towards increased attention to holistic perspectives on the digital transition of the working life. 

The present report explores the unfolding and effects of digitalisation in a working life context and is relevant for organisational life since the applied understanding of digitalisation is a part of “the organisation”.  Therefore, digitalisation is described as: “The use of digital technology to change organisational processes and practices” (Plesner & Husted, 2019, p. 7), focusing on the collective reorganisation of practice shaped by digitalisation. For instance, digitalisation results in changes and adaptations of concrete work tasks, roles, and hierarchies.

Literature on future working life and the so-called “second machine age” (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014), also called industry 4.0 (Liao et al., 2017), often discusses effects of digitalisation based on technology optimism (e.g. Kaplan, 2015) or pessimism (e.g. Pistono, 2015). Both perspectives claim some sort of technological determinism, where digitalisation is understood as a fixed development that either will result in new jobs (optimism) or job loss (pessimism). Without rejecting the reality of any of these scenarios this report offers another focus and proposes different solutions and types of recommendations to better understand and support digitalisation in a beneficial way to everyone living in the Nordic countries. Our solutions and recommendations are primarily based on the reality employees and managers face when implementing new technology, digitizing workflows, or changing/replacing manual work tasks with robot technology.  Our solutions and recommendations thus insist on adopting a holistic view on digitalisation, with an eye on how technologies are entangled, embedded, forming, and formed by concrete organisational practices of which they are part. It is this entanglement that the authors of this report focus on, and which we argue contributes to a reorganisation of the working life.

The report´s results are based on cooperation as the decisive point of the research project. This basis is visible in several ways. First and foremost, a part of the research project´s mission and general objective is to strengthen Nordic cooperation on digital inclusion. In short, the recommendations and learning provided by the report aim to contribute to a shared Nordic policy design, but also to create better understanding of and clarity regarding some of the shared Nordic challenges and opportunities inherent in digitalisation. The report offers relevant Nordic recommendations and learning since the research it rests upon has been developed by interested parties from all over the Nordic region. Collectively, employees and managers in small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises from Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark have shared information and experiences through various channels (e.g. in-depth interviews and observation), and these important testimonials are thus another facet of how cooperation is vital in this project. 

Lastly, but not less important, cooperation is visible through input from and continuous dialogue with the NVL Digital – Working Life network and a reference group with members from employers´ associations and trade unions from all Nordic countries.

Considering that the research behind this report is the product of a fan of “Nordic voices” (cf. above), the knowledge created on the challenges and opportunities of digital transition embodies a certain complexity, since the project includes both shared Nordic aspects of the transition of the working life, as well as endemic aspects. As previously mentioned, the Nordic countries are described as “front­runners of digitalisation” (EU, 2022). This status is based on their scoring on various indicators, like for instance the level of basic digital skills in the population, or access to the internet. Despite this shared frontrunner status there are variations in how digitalisation manifests itself in the five countries. These variations include for instance how digital transition is discussed, contexts and priorities in national policy initiatives, and SME business conditions. In the project the differences between the countries as well as what they share have contributed to nuancing and informing the results of the research project and our recommendations.

The report presents five recommendations for policy and practice, as well as learning about dynamics that affect enterprises in their digital transition.