Countries both big and small are looking for new ways of educating their workforce, whether in the plastics sector or other industrial sectors. Vincent Mispelaere is the 

general manager of plastIQ. It’s a Belgium-based sector organization which says it, “in an innovative way, creates a business environment based on lifelong learning.” Below, Mispelaere responds to some questions about how his organization answers local needs for educating plastics workers.—Ed.

Why do you consider plastics to be an historical heritage?

Vincent Mispelaere: The first plastic that was used was Bakelite [phenol formaldehyde resin]. This was around 1908. Bakelite was developed by Leo Baekeland, an American inventor of distinct Belgian origin. He was born in Sint-Martens-Latem as a poor street boy … but studied science at the University of Ghent. However, after his honeymoon in the United States, he decided to say goodbye to his homeland and begin a career as a professor at Columbia University. At the peak of his career, 35 companies manufactured more than 15,000 products in Bakelite. So we proudly can call this special Belgian the founder of plastics. The story obviously appeals to the imagination of many science students in Belgium.

How would you describe the Belgian plastics industry?

Mispelaere: Obviously, Belgium is a very small European country; if you look at the production on a global scale you will find us in the lowest regions of the charts. However, if we look at the annual production per resident, we are the world leader with 548 kg per resident. Therefore, plastics converters take a prominent place within the Belgian industrial fabric. With an average of 40 employees, Belgian companies are actually quite small. This is an important fact in the approach of our service.

Where does plastIQ get its resources required to offer its services?

Mispelaere: PlastIQ is a joint organization, which means that the directors are evenly distributed between employers and trade unions. This is a governance system which allows distributing the available funds in a balanced way, ensuring that both companies and their employees are strengthened in their competitiveness. Fifty percent of our resources comes from the government and the other 50% from the social security that is withheld from the employee wages.

What strategy does plastIQ deploy to approach the companies?

Mispelaere: As indicated before, the small company structure ensures close and confidential contact with the companies. There really is a culture of “everyone knowing each other,” and so companies easily just phone if they have any questions with regard to employment or training initiatives.

Over the last years we have been building a tight relationship of trust with the companies, thanks to high-quality service. In certain regions with many plastic companies we have company clusters where common initiatives regarding influx and training policy are centralized. These clusters often are true sources of creative ideas.

In what industries do you operate?

Mispelaere: Being an intermediary, we try to filter the stream of knowledge, information, and subsidies before offering these to the plastic converters. For example, we recently entered into cooperation agreements with various stakeholders such as education, universities, knowledge centers, employment offices, and governments. In this way we can immediately answer any question companies may have. More specifically, we can say that our actions are clustered for the target groups’ education, employees, employers, and job seekers.

Can education meet the companies’ demand?

Mispelaere: This surely is and remains our key concern. Technical education in Belgium has seen a sharp decline in the number of students over the last years. Through various actions, such as our “Plastic Lab,” we try to convince young people to choose a technical education. We do see some improvement, but there still is a long way to go.

In addition, we do quite some lobbying in order to integrate the plastics conversion objectives into the educational programs of the technical education. In this way all young people will get a basic education in plastics conversion.

How do you keep existing employees competitive?

Mispelaere: The new technological developments and the many innovations in techniques and materials have their effect on the influx and training policy of companies. Existing employees, too, must keep their competences up to date. PlastIQ provides for this through its well-balanced training offer with various partners. In addition, companies may rely on subsidies to offer their employees in-house training. This system is often used for company-specific educational needs.

Do you take any more influx initiatives?

Mispelaere: Higher education shows a larger number of dropouts in Belgium. Through an alternative pathway, we train students under the age of 26 to be operators of innovative plastic materials [processes]. The students are screened for attitudes and learning capacities, and are then trained through a dual pathway customized to the company’s requirements. Those who choose this pathway are highly motivated, as nearly all of them get a contract with the on-the-job training company. The companies get an important role in this pathway, as key competences are achieved in the on-the-job training company.

PlastIQ has developed an innovation software tool for this, in which both the company and the student can monitor, evaluate, and steer the pathway. This tool is unique in the world and is extremely user-friendly because of its accessible interface and web-based technology. Today, a dozen companies are using this pathway and the tools to guarantee the influx of qualified employees. And other technology sectors, too, are very interested in implementing the tool in their pathways. So it is a true success story, and for us it is a boost to further evolve in that direction.

What future challenges do you see, as an organization?

Mispelaere: In order to ensure the durability of the Belgian pensions system, the pensionable age was substantially raised, which implies that we will have an older working population in the near future. To keep these people actively at work is going to be quite a challenge. We are now training older employees to be tutors. In this role they will be able to train and coach newcomers.

Therefore, workability is going to be an important theme in our next master plan, but with our team we are sufficiently armed to face any possible challenge and create a landscape where our entrepreneurs can fully concentrate on the development of high-quality and innovative plastic products.