The City of Tampere is transforming employment and integration services ahead of 2025 reforms. Through co-development and stakeholder collaboration, innovative solutions are being designed to meet future needs efficiently.
In 2021, the Finnish government decided to transfer the responsibility for employment and economic development (TE) services to municipalities. This reform aims to enhance jobseekers' rapid employment, increase service productivity, and ensure better alignment with local labor market needs. The City of Tampere responded to this challenge by partnering with Digitalist to create innovative, future-proof solutions for employment and integration services, ensuring that these services meet the new legislative requirements set to take effect in 2025.
Digitalist worked closely with Tampere's multi-actor network to co-develop solutions that addressed the evolving needs of job seekers and stakeholders. Over the course of 2023 and 2024, Digitalist facilitated four key projects that focused on improving customer experience, clarifying the job seeker journey, and engaging stakeholders through collaborative workshops. This approach helped the City of Tampere build a foundation for a more effective and responsive employment services system.
The core objective of these projects was to ensure that the City of Tampere could effectively meet the new employment and integration service requirements by 2025. This included defining the target state of customer experience for employment services, clarifying the customer journey for job seekers, and engaging stakeholders to shape the future of TE services.
The aim was to develop a comprehensive, customer-centered service model that enhances jobseekers' experiences and promotes better collaboration across the employment ecosystem.
Digitalist implemented a service design approach, using workshops, collaborative design, and research-driven methods. This helped define and visualize customer journeys, created strategic customer experience frameworks, and engaged stakeholders through surveys and workshops.
The projects emphasized co-development, ensuring that solutions were practical, future-proof, and adaptable to changing needs. Digitalist's facilitation enabled the City of Tampere to create solutions that not only align with the upcoming reforms but also improve service effectiveness and accessibility for job seekers.
The aim of the project was to build a target state for customer experience that would guide the future organization and implementation of services as well as the development of customer interactions. The outcome of the work included finished customer promises with descriptions and preliminary target states for each promise.
An important result of the work was also a common understanding formed based on management's collective discussion about the role of customer experience and how customer experience work would continue. The work provided an excellent foundation for measuring and monitoring the target state of customer experience and for implementing the target state in the organization's operations and service delivery.
The City of Tampere was in the process of reforming the service experience for individual clients encountering unemployment situations. A primary need was to clarify the customer journey related to unemployment benefits for those individuals who are not members of an unemployment fund. Also clarification of communication was especially desired to support customer service personnel in their interactions with individual clients in daily customer service interactions.
Digitalist helped to create a clearer, more accessible unemployment benefits journey for customers not covered by unemployment funds. The collaborative effort to unify communication and terminology across different organizations not only supported customer service staff but also enhanced the overall service experience for end-users. Through workshops and iterative visualization, Digitalist facilitated a shared understanding among all parties involved (City of Tampere, the City of Espoo, Kela and the KEHA Centre), leading to a service model that is both more customer-centered and effective.
In fall 2023, Digitalist partnered with the City of Tampere to organize a stakeholder workshop for 180 participants, supporting the national TE services reform. The reform aims to promote rapid employment by leveraging municipal resources. To ensure the reform aligns with diverse needs, the City of Tampere engaged a wide range of stakeholders, including businesses and educational institutions, through a pre-survey and a focused workshop designed by Digitalist.
The workshop addressed key themes like workforce availability and supporting partially capable individuals. Digitalist facilitated the event, utilizing LeanLab to streamline group outputs and feedback. The workshop was a success, with participants valuing the interactive format and networking opportunities. The City of Tampere appreciated the structured execution and the workshop’s contribution to advancing the TE services reform.
In early 2024, Digitalist supported the City of Tampere in facilitating a workshop to address the upcoming KOTO 2025 reform, which aims to enhance employment and integration services. With 80 stakeholders from various sectors, including business leaders and immigrant communities, the workshop focused on generating new ideas for integration services and fostering collaboration among key actors.
I'm especially proud of bringing a fresh, user-centered perspective to problem-solving, ensuring solutions were both innovative and empathetic. The strong synergy between our teams was key to this success, emphasizing the power of collaboration in driving meaningful change.
By fostering environments for meaningful interaction and joint innovation, we were able to bring together diverse stakeholders to co-develop practical insights and solutions.
Our strategic use of digital tools like the LeanLab platform allowed us to efficiently manage large-group engagement while maintaining inclusiveness and focus. This approach not only improved participants' understanding of the reforms but also fostered a strong sense of ownership and commitment.
Through the four sequential projects, Digitalist successfully facilitated deep engagement with a diverse range of stakeholders, including businesses, educational institutions, and public sector partners. By leveraging service design and digital tools like LeanLab, these workshops enabled meaningful collaboration and idea generation that directly informed the employment and integration services reforms. This engagement not only promoted a shared understanding of the reforms but also empowered stakeholders to contribute practical solutions tailored to local needs.
The projects focused heavily on enhancing the customer experience, especially for job seekers navigating unemployment benefits. By clearly mapping customer journeys and refining the service model, Digitalist helped create more accessible, user-friendly processes. The collaboration with key stakeholders like Kela and KEHA Centre resulted in a service design that unified communication, simplified interactions, and better supported individuals in their employment journey, particularly those not covered by unemployment funds.
