Moominworld is a cheerful family theme park in Naantali, and home to the legendary Moomin characters. Moominworld employs several hundred seasonal workers each year, most of whom work in the park during the summer season. The onboarding for the employees of summer season 2022 was carried out using the Vuolearning platform. Now when the summer season has come to an end and the park has been closed for the winter, the satisfied Moominworld employees Mira Aunio, Ida-Maria Lohikoski and Riikka Viinikainen are willing to share their experiences.
Vuolearning brought a desired update to the onboarding process
Every year, Moominworld onboards a large number of employees to work in a variety of roles: in restaurants, kiosks, ticket sales, shops, arcade games, maintenance and as actors.
In early 2022, Ida-Maria Lohikoski and Mira Aunio, who are responsible for Moominworld's employee onboarding, decided that they wanted to renew the process and the tools used. Earlier, the tools that were in use, had not produced the results they had aimed for, and they saw that the process could be improved. They had also noticed a change in the labour market: young people want to work for shorter periods, which leads to an increasing total number of employees and varying lengths of employment periods. Thus, it is no longer possible or sensible to train the whole group at once, and more flexible solutions are needed.
Lohikoski and Aunio decided to look for a new e-learning platform to support the process renewal. They had a strong desire to modernize the process and invest in making the onboarding process an interesting and suitable way for young people to learn.
Moominworld selected Vuolearning as their new e-learning platform for a number of reasons, the most important ones being its ease of use and intuitiveness, its modern and versatile visual appeal and the possibility for a wide range of content elements, as well as the possibility for tracking analytics.
"With the software and systems we have used in the past, it has been typical that only one member of the staff knows how to use the system or make the necessary changes," says Lohikoski. With Vuolearning, they were immediately impressed by the ease of use, and the intuitive platform was easy for the whole team to use, already from the start.
Up-to-date and easy-to-read analytics was an important factor in the selection, as the aim was to link the onboarding training to the payment of salaries, so that the salary is paid when the onboarding is completed. "Vuolearning made this possible and made it easy to monitor and audit the completions and progress", says Riikka Viinikainen, who is an Administrative Assistant at Moominworld and in charge of the reporting. It was also easy to remind the users about returning to the platform if any part of the onboarding had not been completed.
Independent studying supports participating in on-site training sessions
In the spring of 2022, Moominworld seasonal workers were successfully trained for their jobs by combining independent e-learning with hands-on on-site training. Through online materials, lectures and hands-on learning, the summer workers were introduced to their jobs and practical matters, such as Moominworld's corporate culture and brand.
The combination of e-learning materials and on-site training produced the desired results and the model used was found to work very well.
"The learning outcomes were truly better than before. In the on-site training sessions you could tell that the employees had studied the materials beforehand and actually learned it", says Lohikoski.
Hybrid learning, which means combining e-learning and on-site learning, is an excellent way to train employees in a situation where there are a lot of things to learn. "The training days are already intensive and there is a lot of information to absorb. When the employee already has some prior knowledge of the subject, it is easier to internalise more information about it", Aunio says.
Onboarding is an intensive period during which the employee has to absorb a huge amount of new information. This is why it is a good idea to store the information on the Vuolearning platform, and the employee can easily search for it later when it becomes relevant in their job tasks.
High-quality onboarding ensures a smooth start to working life for young people
As Moominworld employees are typically young people, for many of them, Moominworld is their first job.
For this reason, Moominworld has wanted to invest in the onboarding process in particular, and to reinforce the positive experience that young people have of Moominworld as an employer, as well as of working life in general.
This summer, Moominworld's Administrative Assistant Riikka Viinikainen put together a course for employees on the Vuolearning platform. The course was called The ABC of Employment, and the aim of the course was to familiarize the young people with the basics of working life. Moominworld feels that being the first workplace for many, they are in a responsible position. They want to ensure that young people understand, for example, what it means to sign a work contract, what the employer's responsibilities are, or what to do in case of getting sick.
The young target group was also taken into account in the selection of the e-learning platform.
Based on their previous experiences with online training, Lohikoski and Aunio wanted to find a platform that would motivate young people better than the previous tools they had used. The criteria included visual appeal, ease of use and mobile usability. Vuolearning met their criteria, and they have noticed it to be true in practice as well.
Vuolearning was also perceived to support the inclusion of learners from different backgrounds and life situations. They also felt that Vuolearning makes it easy to support different kinds of learners in different life situations.
Moominworld provided their onboarding material to their employees in two ways: as text and as audio. The employees could then choose, whether they wanted to read or listen to the content. Also other types of content tools on the platform were used in various ways: courses included not only text and audio, but also plenty of images, videos and exercises.
The platform also made it possible to participate in the onboarding according to everyone's own schedules. It was easy to divide the courses into shorter periods and return to the material at one's own pace. This feature was helpful, since many of the employees participated in the onboarding while still studying in the spring.
At the end of the summer season, feedback on the renewed onboarding process was collected from Moominworld's summer employees. In addition to Aunio, Lohikoski and Viinikainen, also Moominworld employees were clearly satisfied with the onboarding process, and the feedback shows that the reform was a great success. The platform, the trainers, the structure and the content of the onboarding all received great feedback, and 100% of the employees felt that the combination of e-learning and on-site training should be the way to conduct the onboarding in the future as well.