Human capital

Together with other top sectors, we strive for solutions through the joint Human Capital Agenda (HCA) and learning communities. Our ambition is a future in which highly qualified professionals are involved in life-long learning, are leading in technological innovation and contribute to growth in the high-tech sector.

State of affairs

Ambition

Action points

State of affairs

The Dutch High Tech Systems and Materials sector (HTSM) has been on the up for years: the sector’s production value shows a stable climbing line. The added value and employment opportunities for Dutch industry, when compared to the Dutch total, amounted to an economic value of 12.2% and a labour volume of 9.3% in 2021. In addition, Dutch industry is highly productive when compared to other countries, a catalyst for labour productivity development in the Netherlands and as such an important player in the Dutch competitive strength (TNO analysis paper: 'The value of Dutch industry').

The employment opportunities continue to grow in our sector too. Thanks to the deployment of digitalisation and smart industry, labour productivity has increased. Will the growth potential of our sector remain? Can we continue to have economic and societal impact and contribute to the urgent transitions in our top sector? This depends heavily on the availability of technical staff, engineers and researchers. Our top sector is not on its own here: the human capital issue is alive in all the top sectors. This is partly why a joint Human Capital Agenda (HCA) was developed in which the ten Dutch top sectors bundle their strengths. The Platform Talent for Technology fulfils the coordination and project support for the Human Capital Agenda for all top sectors.

Let us pool our resources for a healthy labour market. The basis for this lies in the optimum cooperation between research, education and commerce.

To act as a catalyst, the top sectors have developed the concept of learning communities in the Human Capital Agenda. These are places where people learn, research and innovate. The result is that innovations reach practice (and education) faster.

With the joint Human Capital Agenda for the top sectors and our own Human Capital Agenda for our sector, we took steps to draw attention to and promote working and life-long development in the sector. With results: we see a growing number of students choosing relevant courses at schools and universities. To maintain this positive trend, we continue with the implementation of the Human Capital Agenda.

We see that in general there is plenty of attention for the development and availability of technical staff: from practical to scientifically trained professionals. An increasing number of companies now develop their own training programmes, projects from the Nationaal Groeifonds (National Growth Fund) get an increasingly large HCA component, five technical sectors, together with VNO-NCW, SME-Netherlands and FME have launched the Aanvalsplan Techniek (Attack Plan for Technology) and act as a catalyst for all levels of education. The various parties work together and harmonise more than they have ever done before. We support these developments wholeheartedly and encourage these in our role as connector in our ecosystem.

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Ambition

We strive to provide growth and direction to sufficiently qualified employees who will continue to learn throughout their careers and who will move in step with technological innovation. Which is why we support activities in which educational institutes and commerce design courses together. In addition, we support initiatives that make the sector more attractive to work in and expand the diversity of the staff compliment.

We connect parties and share the available knowledge, experience and information from the many initiatives within our sector. They can use them and learn from them. This is how we bring education and commerce together to learn from each other and to develop in order to meet the human capital challenges of today and tomorrow.

Action points

Prioritzing and agenda setting

We stimulate the further development of learning communities. In these communities, commerce, education and knowledge institutes work together. They anchor research here and accelerate the speed of innovation creation and application. We support the development of HCA components in National Growth Fund projects for high-tech and manufacturing companies and disseminate the knowledge and best practices that evolve here with our community. We also support the development and implementation of the Human Capital Agenda for the top sectors.

Programming and informing

In our programming of resources for the PPS Innovation scheme we continue to draw attention to the HCA components for research and innovations. We put cooperation on the agenda for ‘out of the box combinations’ of expertise, targeting behavioural change amongst other things. Because if we want to develop successful innovation, we need to include user behaviour in the equation. Only then can we truly realise transitions.

We connect and work in and with regions, companies, knowledge institutes and top sectors. We share knowledge, skills, best practices and learnings and harmonise the development and cooperation. We support our sector’s image through our communication strengths and our network.

As Holland High Tech, we are the centre player in determining our sector’s image. Together with our partners, we focus on a widely supported approach to children (and their parents), young people and workers from other sectors. What is it like to work in (high) tech and how does it contribute to resolving (societal) challenges?