Kuopio City Personnel Service is responsible for the organisation of centralised employer, personnel and employment relationship matters, including staff induction, skills development and work capacity support.
Priima learning environment provides them with one central platform that:
- Make it easier to organise training regardless of time and place
- Allows content to be targeted to different groups of staff
- Supporting the city’s strategy and developing skills in the long term
Read more about why Kuopio chose Priima, how the learning environment has been implemented and what concrete benefits it has brought to the whole organisation.
The change started with a development project
The City of Kuopio has more than 3 700 employees across a wide area of activity. Due to the huge number of staff, centralised skills development required the organisation to find flexible and cost-effective solutions. The Priima learning environment met this need by providing a centralised, accessible and strategically aligned system for learning.
According to Riikka Tähtinen, HR expert of the city, the idea of a digital learning environment was born in 2018-2020, when the City of Kuopio was involved in the. SnellmanEDU’s Learn@work project. The aim of the project was to develop a culture of on-the-job learning and enable learning agility as part of the organisation’s operations.
– The timing was right. The way centralised staff training is delivered was changing, and we wanted to find a solution that would allow learning to take place at any time. At the same time, we wanted to strengthen skills development across our geographically large organisation. By reducing the need to travel, we were able to save both staff effort and city resources,” says Tähtinen.
The tender for the e-learning platform was part of the digitalisation objective that runs through the city’s strategy. The process was conducted through the city’s joint procurement unit, Sansia, and Priima was selected as the supplier following an open tender.
One system, many uses
Priima is used in Kuopio City in a variety of ways to develop the skills and knowledge of its staff. A wide range of content is available: micro-courses, online training and lecture recordings.
– For example, we have had system training, courses in line with our strategic priorities and topical themes such as the child-friendly municipal model, data protection and artificial intelligence. However, I would like to emphasise that Priima is used specifically for centralised staff training, but the colleges and schools have their own solutions for digital education,” says Tähtinen.
“Priima allows for very targeted communication and training for different audiences, which is important for us.”
Riikka Tähtinen, HR Specialist
City staff also benefit from Priima through content produced by partners. One example is Saarni Learning’s partner Academy of Brain, whose multilingual course offerings are an important addition in an increasingly diverse workplace.
From deployment to smooth everyday life
Cooperation with Saarni Learning started already during the implementation phase and has continued since then in a flexible and customer-oriented manner.
– There has been regular contact and we have a dedicated contact person from Saarni Learning who knows our situation well. The customer service is excellent and it has been great to see that we are being offered suggestions for improvement on our own initiative. For example, Customer Relationship Manager Henna-Riikka Ahvenjärvi makes proactive quality management suggestions to ensure that Priima and its features can serve our needs as well as possible,” Tähtinen says.
One of Priima’s strengths has been that its development work is continuous and responsive to customer needs. Kuopio feels that they can see in a concrete way how their feedback influences the development path of the learning platform. This feedback has contributed not only to their own customer experience, but also to the continuous improvement of Priima in general.
– Cooperation has been straightforward and smooth from the start. Together, we are developing ways of using Priima, while taking it forward as a whole. It is important for us to identify the current and future needs of our customers so that we can respond to them in the best possible way. It’s great to see how the City of Kuopio is purposefully developing the skills of its staff and utilising Priima in a versatile way as part of this work,” says Ahvenjärvi from Saarni Learning’s perspective.
Concrete benefits for the whole city
One of the key benefits of Priima is its accessibility, as training can be accessed regardless of time, place or device. The user experience is also praised: for example, the AD integration makes it possible to log in without separate passwords, while the system allows flexibility in the way passwords can be created.
– Priima is easy to use for both staff and managers. It doesn’t require much training to learn, the user experience is quick to understand from the start and training is easy to access,” says Tähtinen.
There is plenty of potential for development
In the future, Priima will also be increasingly used for training in the substantive areas. Kuopio’s early childhood education is already moving from its own platform to Priima, and tailor-made packages are being prepared on the teaching side.
– I feel that we have only just begun to realise the full potential of Priima. The next step is for more and more services to move their training content under the same platform. This will further improve the user experience, staff transitions between job roles and management within our organisation,” says Tähtinen.
Challenges have been mainly in integrating with other systems, but Priima itself has proven to be a stable and evolving platform that can be used extensively across the city’s different functions.
– Priima promotes flexibility and accessibility of learning. It brings learning close to every employee and at the same time supports the strategic goals of the city as a whole,” says Tähtinen.
Do you want to know how Priima could fit your business needs? Contact us!
