Competencies for a Green Denmark

(January 1, 2023 - December 31, 2025)

The project Competencies for a Green Denmark was completed at the end of 2025. The project was carried out as a national partnership with 37 partners – including Business Regions, clusters, universities, and business houses – funded by the European Union and Denmark's Business Promotion Board with a total of DKK 41 million.

The background for the project was an increasing demand for labor and specialized competencies as a result of the green transition. Many companies, especially SMEs, experience that access to the right profiles – both nationally and internationally – is crucial to maintaining competitiveness, developing new solutions, and scaling green business areas.

The purpose of the project has been to help Danish companies acquire the demanded competencies while simultaneously creating a more unified national entry point for qualified labor for the green transition.

Three main tracks and 12 activities

The project was implemented through three main activities, divided into 12 sub-activities:

Attachment of well-qualified labor already in Denmark (unemployed academics and unemployed seniors as well as foreign students)
Attraction of well-qualified labor directly from abroad.

A concrete example of the value creation in this main track is the development of a practice-oriented guide for companies considering direct recruitment of international employees. The guide was developed with a focus on enabling companies to better help themselves and make qualified decisions on an informed basis. It takes the individual manager or hiring employee systematically through all steps in an international recruitment process – from initial considerations to carrying out the hiring.

At the same time, the guide supports a reflective approach, where companies are equipped to be curious about their own organizational conditions. This concretely involves identifying potential challenges and barriers in international recruitment, including cultural, linguistic, and organizational factors. In this way, the effort contributes to decision-makers not only seeing international recruitment as a solution to an acute need but as a strategic choice that requires preparation, adaptation, and organizational maturity.

3. Competence development that strengthens SMEs' ability to attract and carry out onboarding of well-qualified labor.

In the Triangle Region, the effort has had a clear business-oriented focus: making international recruitment more concrete, safer, and more feasible – for SMEs that often lack the time, experience, and internal processes to handle the task alone.

Throughout the project period, we have been in dialogue with well over 100 companies about their needs, opportunities, and concerns regarding recruiting international labor.

The dialogues have had a practical angle and have been based on the questions companies face when considering recruiting from abroad: What does language mean for a new employee's integration – professionally and socially? What demands and expectations can realistically be placed on an employee moving to Denmark? And what cultural differences and barriers can arise in the workplace if one does not actively work with integration, well-being, and everyday practices?

To translate these dialogues into concrete action, we have conducted individually tailored maturation processes with 10 companies that actively wanted to be prepared for international recruitment. The processes aimed to strengthen the companies' own capacity: to create a shared internal understanding, clarify expectations, identify barriers, and establish a more structured approach to both recruitment and onboarding. This has made it easier for companies to move from intention to practice – and to work systematically with the factors that practically determine whether international recruitment succeeds.

The efforts have thus been designed with a focus on maturing companies, clarifying needs and barriers, and translating recruitment ambitions into feasible processes. The effect of this approach is already seen in the companies' concrete plans: one company expects to recruit up to 20 employees during 2026, which underscores that competence development and persistent dialogue can create a decision-making basis and organizational readiness that extends beyond the project period.

Value for companies

The project has particularly created value by:

making recruitment, including international recruitment, more manageable through structured clarification of needs, conditions, and next steps.
translating advice into action via practice-oriented tools and concrete guidelines for recruitment and onboarding.
supporting a holistic approach where attraction, reception, and retention are seen as a unified value chain.

Competencies for a Green Denmark has in the period 2023–2025 contributed to making access to qualified labor more accessible and operational for companies affected by the green transition. The project's quality has especially lain in the combination of strategic direction and practice-oriented tools, structured maturation of companies, concrete tools for recruitment and onboarding, as well as a holistic approach where retention and reception are considered from the start.

Thus, the project has supported companies' opportunities to attract and retain demanded competencies – and to translate green ambitions into growth and concrete development.