In general, the European workplace has been changing rapidly over the last few decades. According to scholars like Frey and Osborne (2013), and Stenstöm and Tynjälä (2009), the key challenge in addressing this evolution for workplace involves developing vocational skills and professional expertise that match the changing needs of European society. Specifically, a radical structural change is now occurring in the industrial sector that involves millions of workers with vocational education and training (VET) (e.g. in Finland alone, 100,000 jobs have disappeared from the industrial sector over the past ten years (4.9.2013)).

These organisational changes result in changes in the workers’ occupations (Attwell, 1997). Teräs and Teräs (2010) emphasise that responding to the changing needs of the workplace is related to workers’ professional development. In the case of workers with VET (with routine, intensive work tasks), an increasing amount of occupations are succumbing to computerisation (for a detailed description of computerisation, see Frey & Osborne, 2013). In short, these alterations have resulted in two extremes: 1) workers change occupations because their previous jobs have been outsourced or replaced by technology (Crafts, 2004) or 2) workers stay on at the same workplace, but their job descriptions change (Maclean & Wilson, 2009; Tuomi-Gröhn & Engeström, 2003). In sum, the needs of the current European workplace are challenging workers’ professional expertise. This provokes new needs for VET and lifelong learning.

Currently, there has been a large increase in the variety of skills that workers with vocational education must have (Wolf, 2011; Fuller & Unwin, 2011). In line with this, the rapidly-advancing technological landscape in the industrial sector is challenging workers’ expertise with regard to problem-solving in technology-rich environments (TRE). A variety of technological tools and information is required to solve problems in the workplace (OECD, 2013). As a direct result of this advancement, workers are facing a major technology challenge, as there is a snowballing need for continuous professional development to deal with the evolving character of technology (Herder et al., 2006). Thus, it is widely agreed that problem-solving in TRE is one of the most important requirements for working life skills. At the same time, it is not yet clear what kinds of abilities workers with VET backgrounds currently have with regard to problem-solving skills in TRE.

Based on this background, we focus on the VET workers problem-solving skills in a TRE. The aim of this study is to identify and discuss problem-solving skills in TRE of workers with VET in Finland. Two main approaches guided this study. First, we explored what basic skills 16-65-year-old adults with VET in Finland have regarding problem solving in TRE. The first research question is

RQ1: What is the level and distribution of problem-solving skills in TRE for workers with VET?

Considering the changing needs of European workplaces, especially with relation to the societal expectations of workers problem-solving skills, a second aim was to identify workers with VET that can be defined as “at-risk” (i.e. having very limited problem-solving skills), “weak performers”, “moderate performers” and “strong performers”. Having identified the “at-risk”, the “weak performers” and the strong performing adults, a related aim was to explore which variables are highly associated with being either at-risk or more proficient as a worker. Because of the need for problems-solving in TRE is likely to increase in the future, we focused on examining in particular the younger (16–40-year-olds) VET adults’ skills. The respective research questions are

RQ2a: How is the level and distribution of problem-solving skills in TRE related to adults with other educational backgrounds?

RQ2b: What are (the background) indicators for problem-solving skills in TRE for VET workers?

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