Guests diner pensant discuss housing and labor market

The economy is racing ahead at full speed and all residents should benefit from that windfall. But in reality, that is not the case at all. In particular, finding affordable housing and employees for all vacancies remains a major challenge.

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Erik Versnel, director of Rabobank MRA. View all photos of this event.

During the meal, stakeholders from government, education and the business community talked to each other at different tables. What needs to be done to tackle the challenges in the housing market and labor market in the Amsterdam region? And how will we tackle those together? The lively conversations led to very concrete ideas. We’ll listen in to four tables.

Table Techgrounds

Techgrounds, an initiative of our TechConnect program, aims to activate underrepresented talent into IT jobs.
As a result of the dinner, Techgrounds will further develop the model of ‘unburdening’ employers. In addition, follow-up discussions will be held with a number of individual parties at this table. Techgrounds is still looking for employers who can look at talent differently together and thus solve the mismatch in the IT labor market.

Table TOMAS

Our initiative TOMAS is a platform for finding and connecting talent development initiatives. During the dinner, there was a strong need for better direction, connection and demand-oriented management of the multitude of talent initiatives in the region. TOMAS will work with concrete cases and will include the discussed best practices from the business community.

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View all photos of this event.

Table Investing in talent: skills for energy transition and construction

Our House of Skills program works as a network organization on a more skills-oriented labor market, including the engineering and construction sectors. Many contacts have been made with companies, municipalities and knowledge institutions to work on a coalition of ‘doers’ this autumn. In the coming years they will realize the renovation of the existing housing stock within the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. Involving and training the new working population is essential in this regard.

Table Commitment to skills and technology in the healthcare sector

A second spearhead of House of Skills focuses on healthcare and welfare. During the dinner, agreements were made about putting the topics of skills and technology on the agenda for resources that will be made available from the National Growth Fund for the Lifelong Development catalyst. An exploration will also be carried out into how technology can be used in practice to make work processes easier for manually trained employees. There is still a need for expertise for a social business case to connect working in healthcare on the basis of skills and the use of technology.

Crucial in all solutions is closer collaboration between the public and private sectors, so that we are stronger together in our metropolis.

Photos: Barbara Kieboom