Swiss Circular Economy of Skills and Competences (SCESC)

The Challenge

The Swiss vocational education system traditionally organized continuing education around predefined professions and fixed diploma programs. As labor market demands shifted rapidly, workers needed to acquire specific competencies across professional boundaries rather than complete entire degree programs. Yet no infrastructure existed to systematically match individual skill gaps with available training offerings, nor to recognize competencies acquired informally through work experience. Continuing education remained difficult to access, especially for workers seeking to transition between fields.

Approach and Methods

Five Swiss universities (SFIVET, EPFL, UZH, ZHAW, and HSG) collaborated on the Innosuisse Flagship project from February 2022 to December 2025 to develop a continuing education platform based on circular economy principles. The platform was built on top of X28, an existing Swiss company that connected training demand and supply through algorithmic matching. The research consortium contributed several innovations: algorithm-based scanning of job announcements, job profiles, course catalogs, and CVs to identify skill patterns; individual competence portfolios that captured both formal credentials and informally acquired skills through open badge systems; a recommendation engine that matched identified skill gaps with specific training offerings; and a personalized digital motivation coach that supported learners through the training process with dialogue-based guidance, gamification elements, and real-time progress tracking.

Key Findings

The project delivered a functional platform that performed three-way matching between employer skill demands, individual competence profiles, and training provider offerings. The competence portfolio system demonstrated that informal skills acquired through work experience and project participation could be systematically captured and recognized alongside formal qualifications. The digital coach component showed that personalized, dialogue-based support improved learner engagement and completion rates. The platform enabled a shift from diploma-oriented to competence-module-oriented continuing education, allowing career transitions that the traditional system did not support.

Implications

The project established a blueprint for modernizing continuing education infrastructure at a national level. By applying circular economy principles to skills and competencies, the platform created a system where acquired and required training content was continuously renewed and matched to current labor market needs. The approach demonstrated that algorithmic matching, combined with recognition of informal learning, could make continuing education more accessible and responsive, particularly for workers seeking to transition between professional fields.

Team and Funding

The project was led by Prof. Dr. Roman Rietsche (overall project manager) and Dr. Andreas Janson, with Andreas Goldi, Alexander Meier, and Prof. Dr. Ivo Blohm (IWI-HSG), as well as Marco Strate and Prof. Dr. Bernadette Dilger (IWP-HSG) on the HSG side. Research partners included SFIVET (EHB), EPFL, UZH, and ZHAW. The implementation partner was X28 AG. The project was funded by Innosuisse as a Flagship project (CHF 6 million, February 2022 to December 2025).