The whole world has been afflicted by a pandemic that has had devastating and very severe consequences for companies, organisations and their employees. In a very short space of time, these consequences have had a profound negative impact on the labour market which has led to a huge number of redundancies and notices of termination of employment. The government has taken several measures aimed at mitigating these negative consequences. One of these measures is the possibility for companies to apply for financial support for short-time work schemes in response to the Corona pandemic. Another initiative has been to advertise calls for funding through the European Social Fund (ESF) in order to provide opportunities for companies and their employees to benefit from competence development measures aimed at strengthening the individual's skills at the workplace and/or their position on the labour market if subjected to lay-off or notice of termination of employment. Following this call by ESF, the Swedish Job Transition Foundation for blue-collar workers in the private sector, Trygghetsfonden TSL (TSL) is submitting an application to lead a project within the framework of the call's national funding called "Competence for competitiveness – for individuals and companies". The Swedish Job Transition Foundation is a job transition fund established by the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise and the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) for workers in the private sector. A total of 70,000 employers and 2,000,000 employees are connected to TSL's job transition system. Our goal is to help privately employed workers who have been made redundant due to a lack of work to find a new job, start their own business or commence studies. During the last twelve months, nine out of ten participants have been able to resolve their situation within one year. TSL has long experience of job transition, facilitates structural changes on the labour market, and improves the matching of company needs and worker skills. The target groups for the proposed project are companies in the private sector suffering from financial loss and their employees. This including people who are working on short time scheme or are given notice of termination of employment. According to statistics provided by the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth, as of 29 April 2020, a total of 300,000 employees in 30,000 companies were involved with a short-time working scheme. Many of these companies are connected to TSL and even more are suffering from financial loss. As the owner of the national project "Competence for competitiveness – for individuals and companies", TSL will set up a framework that offers companies and its employees the opportunity to apply for validation and competence development measures. The application is for a project at national level. Operationally, the project will involve procuring validation and educational schemes, the spreading of information of the project opportunities, and the handling of applications. An important element of the project will be collaboration and dialogue with relevant stakeholders, such as employers and employees, professional organisations, public authorities, validation and education providers. The design and implementation of the project will also focus strongly on the integration of gender equality and accessibility perspectives. In addition, TSL will be responsible for administrating and ensuring the follow-up of project targets and quality assurance. The expected outcomes of the project are that women and men will be offered and will take part in competence development schemes. Our aim is that that those who have taken part in such measures will feel they have strengthened their skills within their current position of employment or will feel better equipped for employment at another company or industry. The expected outcomes for companies are that competence development measures for employees will be perceived as contributing to increased competitiveness as a result of the employees’ higher level of skills and competence. Another aim of the project is to develop a working model for competence development for employees, which in the future can be used as a model in the event of short-time work or for similar objectives regarding employees’ up- or re-skilling measures.