References

  • The welfare area reform in Finland should preserve the trust and resources of the personnel. One critical group for the operation of hospitals is facility maintenance. Their work is irreplaceable in supply and food delivery as well as cleanliness. With the help of Freia's experts, we wanted to proactively secure the resources of facility maintenance workers and supervisors. We received valuable confirmation of our own thoughts from the Freia audit service. We know what to pay attention when starting a new welfare area in 2023. And the audit day itself was empowering - as supervisors we were able to focus on the most important thing, our personnel, without feeling hurry.

    Kaija Lappalainen, Sosteri, HR Manager

  • Our goal is to build a novel culture of leadership and well-being at work into our units. Freia’s experts have helped us with auditing the situation awareness of work ability management, negotiating about occupational health care, building internal work ability management models, as well as developing the leadership skills of our supervisors. Our collaboration has only just started, but already now we have systematically focused on what should be done and what not, in order to gain our business goals.

    Mikko Mäki-Tuuri, Director, HR Finland and Uponor Infra at Uponor

  • Our goal is to be at the top of our industry in well-being and safety at work. The Freia team has helped us to plan and implement the new Kaikki kunnossa (All in Order) program. In addition, we became inspired about Freia’s playmaker idea, and as a result, we now have our own internal team of carers. The best thing about our collaboration with Freia has been the cooperative change of thoughts on how we can bounce from a good company into a great one. Together we have also created new procedures on getting the personnel to take part in developing well-being and safety at work.

    Nina Perttula, HR Manager at Kuusakoski Oy

  • Our goal is to strengthen our entire personnel and their transferable skills as part of our strategy. We started a multi-year health promotion program, because we want to take care of our capable work force and to decrease sickness absences. We also want to be our own responsible leader and an attractive place to work. Together with the Freia team, we defined our plan, goals, indicators and concrete procedures. Our collaboration has contained leadership development, ensuring of the processes of work ability management, as well as well-being services targeted for our personnel. Having one service provider and their model in use has brought clarity and efficiency in our project leadership. We have been able to choose the services that best suit our needs. In order to find solution, confidential collaboration is necessary.

    Maria-Liisa Korolainen, Personnel Manager at Tampere Adult Education Centre, TAKK

CASE – FOREST INDUSTRY

A multiyear personnel health promotion program was carried out in 2010–2018. During these nine years, 128 services were executed around Finland. As a result, sickness absences declined 39%, and the personnel health percentage grew from below 50% to over 80%. A dissertation about the effectiveness of the intervention is in the making, and its published articles can be downloaded from our Materials site.

 

Customer comment:
“We are very pleased with the results. The long-term tool has supported our personnel’s satisfaction, work atmosphere and engagement. Operating preventively brings savings and competitive advantage in the long run.”

CASE – CHANGE MANAGEMENT

The health care, social welfare and regional government reform is one of the largest structural changes in recent Finnish history. We trained the regional management, personnel representatives, and essential stakeholders in a broad planning project of change management in southern Savo in 2018–2019. In the project, change management was approached from individual, communal, structural and environmental views. Participation was encouraged in carrying out the planning group, the change training groups Virta and Koski, the seminar day, and the digital toolbox. You can order the 36-page final report of the project (in Finnish) from info@freialife.com.

 

Customer comment:
“In order to succeed in large changes, the personnel needs to be committed, the work culture and ways of thinking need to be renewed, and we need to invest in a humane way of managing the company. The project trainers were reliable and goal-oriented experts in their field.”

CASE – HEALTH CARE

In 2018–2019, we carried out a broad working life development project in five different Finnish health care and social welfare units. The target group of the project consisted over 2,200 health care professionals. The number of sickness absences in all municipal units together stayed at the same level, but there were developmental differences in organizational levels.

 

The process indicators of the project showed changes, which – according compared to earlier studies – would have been enough in generating positive impact in the target group. The best success was achieved in informing the participants and in targeting the services cost-effectively.

 

Evaluating the conventions of work ability management showed that conventions had been agreed upon, but their execution varied. The biggest deficiencies were in the structures of work ability management and in taking preventive actions.

 

According to the observations made in the research project, 15 separate conclusions were formed. All parties and organizations in health care and social welfare can utilize these conclusions in improving their employees’ well-being at work, and their ability to work and to cope in working life. The research report (in Finnish) can be found and downloaded under our Materials site.

 

Customer comment:
“Seeing and managing the bigger picture made the most difference. All the planned services were executed professionally and very well. The health care personnel evaluated that the NPS of the training services was more than 60%.”

CASE – WORK ABILITY MANAGEMENT

The future of Finland and its national economy depend on export. For companies specialized in logistics, stevedoring, port and forwarding services, it is essentially important to take care of their customer base’s cargo transport from Finnish ports to all over the world. It all comes down to employees who know their business. Their ability to work is looked after by being preventive at the right time.

 

Because of the special features of ports and the great variation in cargo traffic, the organizational structure of the case company is very different from that of many other companies. Therefore, the work ability management models used by other companies cannot be exploited as such in the logistics field. The management models need to modulate into the business in question, not the other way around.

 

In the implemented solutions, we invested in personal conversations about work ability, in improving collaboration with occupational health care, and in renewing the plan of strategic work ability management as well as its goals and indicators.

 

Customer comment:
”We previously tried to do everything ourselves, but there was just not enough time. Now, in only a short period of time, we have succeeded in making work ability management more preventive, and improved our collaboration with occupational health care. We have also received help in finding solutions to challenging situations.”

CASE – ENERGY

Electricity, heating and online businesses have gone through severe changes. Organizational structures, partnerships, and business models have changed. Since 2018, we have carried out several leadership development trainings for a Finnish energy company in southern Savo, as well as services that support their personnel well-being.

 

In the trainings, we focused on developing managerial work as part of the change process. We worked in management groups, carried out 360-degree appraisals, arranged contact periods for managers, and concentrated on communal support for the managerial path.

 

Customer comment:
“The trainings launched our long-time project of managerial development. There’s no going back to the old models of random implementations. After our second year of collaboration, the management indicators started showing positive impact.“

CASE – DESIGN

Working life strains mental health more than before. We carried out a piloting project together with the personnel management of a Finnish professional corporation of national real estate and construction. The project was implemented in 2019–2020, and its support was directed to the managers who were under a load of mental stress. We utilized the JobFit evaluation method, small training groups, and the framework of a complex operational environment. We implemented the trainings so that it was easy to participate in them alongside the everyday management work, project leadership, and customer collaboration.

 

Customer comment:
”We have recognized the mental demands of our work and want to support our managers preventively. The project also gave us valuable information on which tools are just right for us.”