Expert article
Edit 13 December 2021
by Ronald Lievens, UIA Expert

Major milestone for P4W: national skills survey complete

Dutch Skills Survey
Dutch Skills Survey
In October 2020, Passport4Work started an ambitious national research endeavour: replicating the survey of the leading skills taxonomy O*NET in the Dutch labour market. A little over a year later, the study has been finalized, and the results will shape the matching engine in the P4W platform.
Share

Developing insights in supply and demand on the labour market is one of the core activities of Passport4Work. This is done by painting a timely picture of the skills needed by employers, and those in possession by workers, and then comparing the two.

One important prerequisite for this comparison is the realization of a common understanding of skills. After all, skills can be complex and abstract, leaving plenty of room for interpretation. To avoid this, Passport4Work made the decision to build its tools on a universally known skills language (also known as a taxonomy): the US-based O*NET. However, a major concern has been the representativeness of O*NET for the Dutch labour market. Considering the highly contextual nature of occupations and skills, merely copying the American skills language and its underlying data could result in mismatches due to a misrepresentation of the Dutch labour market. This could occur because O*NET includes information on the relevance, and required level of a skill for a certain occupation. 

In an attempt to still benefit from the recognizability and robustness of the O*NET skills language, but to make sure the underlying data on the relevance and required level of a skill are accurate for the Dutch labour market, a national survey was conducted among Dutch employers and employees (which is the same methodology employed by O*NET in the United States). 

The results: what does the survey tell us?

The survey was built around the three sectors of industry which are central to Passport4Work: Health care, construction, and the technical industry. For each of these sectors, 8 key occupations were selected together with industry representatives (looking at criteria such as demand, and foreseen importance for the near future).

sectors survey P4W
The occupations represented in the survey

While the survey was conducted in the middle of the pandemic, the response has been satisfactory. In total, 1139 employers and employees contributed to the survey. The confidence level of the results is 95%, with a margin of error of 8% for construction, 7% for health care, and 10% for the technical industry (due to slight differences in the response rate across the sectors). This means that if we were to repeat the survey 100 times, more or less the same results would be obtained in 95 cases.

While the project  team is still analyzing all the results, a few preliminary findings are worth sharing:

  • In the survey we also asked for the most important 21st century skills. The top 3 is composed of communication, problem solving, and working in a team. Somewhat surprisingly, ICT skills rank in the bottom half of the top 10. This finding is particularly interesting in the context of the robotics and automation debate; the top-3 reflects those skills which are most difficult  to automate.
  • On first glance, all occupations have completely different top 10's in terms of the most relevant skills. Across sectors, problem solving, communication and listening are recurring skills in the upper echelons of the data.

Incorporating the data in P4W

The results will be used in three ways. First of all, it will be shared with the national skills language initiative CompetentNL (initiated and governed on a national level). By doing so, P4W provides evidence-based information on the relevance and required mastery level of skills. On its basis, it could be upscaled further to encompass all sectors of industry in The Netherlands. 

Second, the data will drive the matching algorithm in Passport4Work. In essence, this means that a jobseeker's completed skills passport (in P4W terms, their "skillprint) will be matched with a particular vacancy based on this data.

Third and finally, the data is included in P4W's vacancy builder tool. Here, employers can simply click on a occupation for which they have an open vacancy, and the survey data is pre-filled for them in the system. This reduces a big burden for employers, who no longer have to analyze which skills are most important for a occupation.

Other news from this project

Passport for Work Journal 4

Passport for Work's Legacy: Journal 4

Passport for Work's fourth and final journal, reflecting on its legacy and its activities after the formal project period....

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

Jobs and skills in the local economy
PfW impact study

Passport for Work: first results of the impact study & invitation to final event

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

Jobs and skills in the local economy
Passport for Work refugee workshop

Passport for Work supports refugee integration into the labour market

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

Jobs and skills in the local economy
social innovation P4W

Passport for Work’s scientific impact study kicks off

Ever since the Passport for Work project started, it has been a key objective to support its social innovation process with a scientific impact analys...

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

Jobs and skills in the local economy
Zoom-in video podcast

Passport for Work Zoom-in: The Skill Based Economy

The Dutch labour market is facing unprecedented shortages, calling for a skill based economy in which skill based matching, reskilling and upskilling ...

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

Jobs and skills in the local economy
P4W focus groups in HE

Passport4Work expands target group: focus groups with University students

Striving for an inclusive labour market instrument, Passport4Work organized 2 focus group sessions with University students to establish its utility b...

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

Jobs and skills in the local economy
P4W Journal 3

Passport4Work Journal 3

Passport4Work is nearing the product delivery phase. Learn more about the state of play of the project and its contributions to a skills-based economy...

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

Jobs and skills in the local economy
P4W at HR Live

Passport4Work launches employer prototype at HR Live

Passport4Work reached a major milestone in its project, by recently finishing the first prototype of the employer interface of the tool. This prototyp...

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

Jobs and skills in the local economy
P4W zoom in 2

Passport for Work Zoom-in: Skills based matching

In the second Passport for Work zoom-in, the implications of skills based matching are explored among employers. We visited employers in three differe...

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

Jobs and skills in the local economy
P4W Journal 2: A phase of intensive technical development and prototyping!

P4W Journal 2: A phase of intensive technical development and prototyping!

In his 2nd journal, UIA Expert Ronald Lievens reflects on the current state of affairs in the Passport4Work (P4W) project, its developments, and the d...

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

P4W Prototype Launch image

Passport4Work completes series of tests of first prototype (video)

After a series of sophisticated user experience tests, Passport4Work launched its first prototype this month. ...

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

Jobs and skills in the local economy
image p4w zoom in 1

Passport for Work Zoom-in: soft skills to sustain employability

In his 1st zoom-in, P4W expert Ronald Lievens, explores why soft skills are a key part of the Passport4Work project. Especially in these times, with c...

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

Jobs and skills in the local economy
Re-skilling
Smarter Europe
Talent management
P4W Web Article 3

Passport4Work starts ambitious Dutch validation of US-based O*NET framework

Passport4Work has started a widespread, ambitious national study among Dutch employers, job seekers and intermediaries to contextualize and validate t...

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

Jobs and skills in the local economy
P4W_zoom in

How and why soft skills are important to the Passport4Work?

In his 1st zoom-in, P4W expert Ronald Lievens, explores why soft skills are a key part of the Passport4Work project. Especially in these times, with c...

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

P4W Web Article 2

Passport4Work update: abstract skills in layman's terms

As described in the previous web article, P4W is developing tools for skills assessment, eLearnings and job matching....

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

Jobs and skills in the local economy
Eindhoven

P4W Expert Journal 1: Get to know the project and what happened in the first 6 months!

In his 1st Journal, Ronald Lievens, UIA expert of the P4W project, discusses all key activities that you need to know about it, what the project is ab...

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

Jobs and skills in the local economy
P4W Web Article 1

Passport4Work: Towards a common understanding of skills

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

Jobs and skills in the local economy
An update on Passport4Work

An update on Passport4Work

2020 is already well underway; time for an update on Passport4Work. The project team has not been idle in recent months and a lot has happened. In Jan...

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands

All partners of the P4W project

Kick-off of the project Passport4Work

To officially inform our local and national stakeholders, a kick-off for the project was held on Thursday June 13th. This coincided with a national da...

P4W - Passport4Work an intersectoral skills passport with gamified skills assessment and improvement

Jobs and skills in the local economy

Eindhoven - The Netherlands