Representative from Interal at Teknikcollege national conference 2017

At the Teknikcollege* national conference on November 8, Robert Grubesic from Interal AB took part in a panel debate on the topic "How can we make it more attractive for young people to study technology?"

Another entrepreneur, a PhD student and two political representatives from the Social Democrats and the Moderates took part in the debate.

The entrepreneurs talked about the industry's need for different types of labor in the technology area and what challenges we as Swedish industry are facing today in terms of a lack of labor with the right skills.

The politicians agreed that the industry must open its doors and showcase its activities. They put forward some different concrete proposals; such as open houses for employees' relatives, field trips for school classes to name some of the examples that came up.

Interal has already taken hold of these ideas on a previous occasion and organized an open house for the employees with families in the spring of 2015, which is a good way to showcase this industry to the next generation, where today there is a reduced interest in technical education.

Robert's general impression of the debate was positive and he sums it up like this: "It is a tough industry to run a company as a subcontractor in Sweden, but after this day I felt a little more hopeful because of the great commitment from the politicians at the national level."

*Teknikcollege is a concept where 3,000 industrial companies collaborate with 150 training coordinators across Sweden. The aim is to increase the attractiveness and quality of technically oriented educations. (http://www.teknikcollege.se)