Online Trainings Support Polkka's Diverse Workforce in Everyday Learning Needs
The Vuolearning platform allows easy input and embedding of information, as well as the creation of...
Sitowise is a Nordic expert and digital company focusing on the design of the built environment. Their team consists of over 2,200 employees across 28 locations in Finland and Sweden. Sitowise creates smart cities, environments, and living spaces based on the principles of sustainable development. The company operates in three business areas: building design, infrastructure construction design, and digital services. Sitowise’s vision is "Redefining smartness in cities," which in practice means providing even more sustainable, more innovative, and smarter solutions in urban environments.
Kirsikka Sarkeala works at Sitowise as the personnel development manager and career counselor. She is responsible for the processes related to competence development, including planning, implementation, and development. She is also in charge of the related guidelines and policies, the general training offerings, coaching, and supporting the personnel's career development.
Sarkeala designs, implements, and develops various internal training programs. She also serves as the superadmin user of the Vuolearning platform and is responsible for its content and continuous renewal.
The Vuolearning learning environment is integral to all competence development
"Customers' expectations are constantly growing, as are the employees' expectations of their work and leadership. Our operating environment is changing rapidly and continuously," Sarkeala explains. The goal of the competence development is to address the following questions:
- How do we maintain our innovation and expertise?
- How can we be an attractive workplace for the best talent in the industry?
- How do we respond to the challenges of a changing work environment?
Training the personnel and providing diverse learning opportunities is one of Sitowise's ways of ensuring staff renewal. Sitowise offers a wide range of internal trainings and coaching sessions. A large selection of online courses and comprehensive training packages are available in the Vuolearning environment, which Sitowise internally calls StudyHub. Employees also have the opportunity to receive training outside the organization. Today, informal online learning is popular, allowing for flexible study at one's own time.
Sitowise ©
Sitowise uses the Vuolearning environment extensively, offering 120 online courses and 16 learning paths, including professional trainings, a webinar library, system trainings, learning paths for new project managers, work-life skill sets, mentoring programs, training and support for supervisors, development discussions, onboarding programs, cybersecurity training, and career development support services. The Vuolearning platform is integral to all aspects of competence development.
"Learning paths provide structure and organization to the learning environment. It’s easier for me to define the target audience for online courses through these learning paths," Sarkeala explains. The learning paths for project managers and supervisors at Sitowise make it easy to show the competence level of an employee transitioning to a new role or a new hire. The paths help to define what skills, knowledge, and understanding are necessary to perform effectively in a particular role.
"We have both mandatory and optional online courses, and the learning paths set the competence level requirements."
The user-friendly and cost-effective Vuolearning online learning platform was convincing
One year before the purchase decision was made, Sarkeala had started discussions about the need for an online learning environment to support the competence development. While exploring different options, it became clear what was really needed and what the core objectives were. "We decided to acquire the Vuolearning platform for several reasons. The platform’s Finnish language support and the option to select the user’s language were important factors. Additionally, we appreciated the platform’s value for money, user-friendliness, and the level of service provided to the customers," says Sarkeala.
"If there was any doubt about whether this platform (Vuolearning) could work in such a large organization, I can say that it works brilliantly!"
Creating online courses on the platform has been found to be easy, and the user-friendliness of the system is highly valued. In addition to these, the customization options of the learning environment, SSO login, and the user support were also important selection criteria. Vuolearning is suitable for both large and smaller user groups. Moreover, Sitowise has appreciated the possibility of customizing the platform’s visual appearance to make the learning environment look distinctly like Sitowise’s.
"I was really impressed with how easy it is to create online courses in the Vuolearning platform."
The Vuolearning platform meets the needs of a large organization
The Vuolearning platform is used by all Sitowise employees. Last fall, Sitowise launched system update trainings, and for a few weeks, the entire staff, about two thousand users, participated in the trainings on the platform. The number of users may vary monthly between a few dozen to a few hundred, depending on when new courses are published in the learning environment. The number of new hires also affects the number of users.
Sitowise has around 300 employees in Sweden. They use the Vuolearning platform in Swedish, and they have created a lot of Swedish content on the platform. "One of our important criteria was that the platform could support the Swedish language," Sarkeala notes.
Sitowise created various categories in order to be able to group the online courses according to user groups. These categories allow courses to be targeted for example at specific geographic areas or certain staff groups. The entire course selection is never open to everyone, which simplifies the user interface and makes it easier to find relevant online courses.
"The categorization of courses is an excellent feature."
Sitowise has five superadmins and 30 admins. The HR department is responsible for managing the Vuolearning platform, so all superadmins are HR professionals. Admins come from different business areas and organizational levels, which has made the content production at Sitowise easier. "We have so much diverse expertise. The HR wouldn’t be able to serve all the content creation needs if we had to create or build all the courses on the Vuolearning platform ourselves," Sarkeala says.
At first, Sitowise thought about how to manage such a large entity. The solution was that content creators would not be given access rights until they had completed an online course, created by Sarkeala herself, covering the basics of online course creation: why do you want to create a course, who is the target audience, why are you undertaking this, what do you aim to achieve with the course, and what should the participants learn from the course. The course also covers learning, course construction, and sharing. "Once the content creator has completed the online course, they are granted admin rights to the Vuolearning platform," Sarkeala explains.
"In an organization of our size, it’s quite essential that multiple parties can produce content."
Collaboration with Vuolearning has been smooth and easy
Several customizations have been made to the Vuolearning platform for Sitowise, and the customization processes have gone smoothly and at reasonable costs. Sarkeala comments: "We have integrated the HR system Mepco into the platform and built various interfaces between the Vuolearning platform and other systems in collaboration. Most recently, we created an interface that allows course completions to be transferred from the Vuolearning platform to the PowerBI system. This enables supervisors and management to track course completions. We have been able to build a comprehensive solution that serves us well."
"All the collaboration related to building interfaces has been really smooth and easy. The discussions were conducted in a way that even someone without a technical background could understand what was being discussed."
The support received from the customer and support services has been rated as excellent. "If I had to give a grade, it would be A+! Customer service is quick, knowledgeable, and helpful. It has also been particularly useful to have the same contact person, which has made collaboration easier," Sarkeala concludes.