Helkama: Verifiability and unity in the onboarding process with Vuolearning’s learning platform

Helkama has been a part of Finnish home and company life for more than 115 years. The training practices of Helkama Emotor group and its subsidiaries have begun a process of streamlining with Vuolearning, including close co-operation in content production.

Helkama Emotor group HR Manager Maija Rasinkangas is responsible for the group’s human resources operations and, by extension, employee training. Developing training processes to support business activities is at the core of Rasinkangas’ duties:

How to develop operation models so that business activities evolve efficiently?

Helkama wanted to begin enhancing its business activities in 2022 by adapting an e-learning platform and digitizing onboarding training. Rasinkangas shares her experiences and thoughts from throughout the project, as well as on the co-operation with Vuolearning.

Verifiability and unity to the onboarding process with a learning platform

It was decided to adapt Vuolearning and digitize training at Helkama in steps, subsidiary and function at a time. The first to receive this treatment was the onboarding process of Helkama Bica, responsible for the production of marine and telecommunications cables. Onboarding used to be performed at Helkama Bica in the so-called traditional form before adopting Vuolearning: e.g. with paper materials and in-person teaching, and with manual tabling of performance results.

The basis for digitizing the onboarding was the realization that more accurate monitoring of onboarding results than before was desired. Helkama Bica needed to be able to ascertain who had gone through onboarding and at what time, as well as what that onboarding had included in practice. In addition, a more unified onboarding process with the same content no matter who is responsible for it at any given time was sought with digitization, says Rasinkangas. Better employee experiences were also a goal.

“We want the onboarding to go through the same basics with all employees. This allows us to ensure the necessary knowledge and skills for all of our employees as well as unified policies throughout the company."

Through the digitization of onboarding, much of the company’s “silent information” has now been documented and a clear model of baseline knowledge for all new employees has been created. Unified onboarding is advantageous for both the employee and the employer.

It is common that not everything can be or is sensible to teach online in onboarding processes. This was true for Helkama as well. Helkama Bica strove to first identify the parts appropriate for digitization, which led to the digitization of e.g. general onboarding, product training, and work safety training.

Different training paths for production and office employees were desirable in order to allow everyone to familiarize themselves with the most relevant information for their own tasks in the onboarding. It is important to convey information on the most important practices of each employee’s personal daily work life. Some of the courses and content proved usable for both learning paths, but some had to be adapted depending on the course target groups. For example, remote work practices and things related to everyday work safety differ quite a lot depending on whether one works on a production line or at an office desk.

The easy-to-use Vuolearning was selected as the learning platform

Helkama chose to begin implementing e-learning with Vuolearning’s learning platform. Vuolearning’s ease of use and usability left an impression. It was felt to embody both the learners’ and the admins’ needs for a learning platform.

“Vuolearning allows for the creation of easily discernible bodies of material for the learners, and monitoring the analytics is easy for the admins,” Rasinkangas describes the factors that led to the selection.

The co-operation experience with Vuolearning’s customer representative has been first-rate from the beginning of the acquisition process to the present. The customer representative committed to finding solutions made Helkama feel confident and strengthened their decision to begin implementing e-learning specifically with Vuolearning.

“Our customer representative is solution-oriented, efficient, and committed. It has been great to see how well they know our company and situation, and can always offer solutions that fit us.” tells Rasinkangas.

Course content production outsourcing saves resources and ensures learning

Once the learning platform had been selected and taken into use, it was time to focus on deciding what kinds of content to introduce to it. In other words, what the new online onboarding would contain in practice.

Helkama ended up using Vuolearning’s content production service, in which Vuolearning’s expert edited ready to be used online courses from Helkama’s existing PDF and PowerPoint onboarding materials.

By outsourcing the course creation, Helkama wanted to save their time resources and ensure the courses can be implemented quickly. The first Summer workers were about to begin their employment in just a few weeks and outsourcing the content production ensured the materials would be usable for them from the beginning. Time resources were also saved from the point of view that Rasinkangas didn’t have to spend time on learning to use the new system in the middle of a busy spring.

“I believe it is sensible to consider when it’s smart to focus on something yourself and spend time on it and when it’s better to make use of outside help. In this situation, it was the best option for us to rely on Vuolearning’s know-how.”

In addition, outsourcing ensured that the materials produced were appropriate to the platform and ensured learning from the beginning. The produced materials and things learned along the project could act as templates for new content produced in the future.

A pleased Rasinkangas tells the project and co-operation succeeded exceptionally well and the produced content lived up to the expectations.

“The expert from Vuolearning was fast and extremely skilled. Everything went well in the process. Material production was quick and insightful; even the course strongly related to our factory’s content - which the expert was unfamiliar with - came about naturally.”

The first learning paths have now been released on Helkama’s learning platform and taken into use by employees. Co-operation with Vuolearning continues next in the form of an onboarding course for their bicycle manufacturing subsidiary, Helkama Velox.