Wellbeing services county of Päijät-Häme wanted a system that supports competence development and management across the entire organization of 8000 employees. The implementation of the Vuolearning platform was carried out on a tight schedule, but clearly defined roles, effective collaboration, and flexible execution ensured the project's success.
Employees from Wellbeing services county of Päijät-Häme and Vuolearning who worked in the project met in Lahti for a retrospective session after the implementation of the learning platform.
Wellbeing services county of Päijät-Häme is responsible for social and healthcare services as well as rescue services across ten municipalities in Päijät-Häme. The wellbeing services county is the largest employer in the region, with approximately 8000 employees representing a wide range of professionals in social services, healthcare, and rescue services. The staff works in dozens of locations across the region, making the organization both operationally and geographically extensive.
The wellbeing services county has a large number of different job titles, reflecting the diversity of its operations and expertise: from client and patient work to specialist, supervisory, and support service roles. These roles involve varying qualification, training, and competency requirements, the management of which is essential for ensuring the quality and safety of services.
In this customer story, we interviewed HR Development Specialist Anne Saari, who served as the project manager for the platform's functional components during the system procurement process, and ICT Project Manager Minna Sollasvaara, who acted as the technical project manager in the process.
The goal of acquiring a competence management system for the wellbeing services county was to achieve up-to-date and unified visibility into the staff's competencies. Additionally, the system was expected to support competence development and enable the monitoring of competence management across the entire organization. The procurement was carried out as a public tender in accordance with legislation, which Vuolearning won.
The implementation of the Vuolearning platform was carried out under an extremely tight schedule. The process took approximately four months from the procurement decision and contact signing to the implementation.
The implementation project included, among other things, change management (including a DPIA), implementing integrations, system testing, and platform user trainings. During the rollout, the wellbeing services county had a large volume of course data to migrate. Automation could not be used for this, so the work was done manually.
"It was a very hectic period, but we had highly skilled people working on the project on both the wellbeing service county's and Vuolearning's sides," says Sollasvaara. In addition to competent personnel, a well-designed overall structure and clearly defined roles in both sides were key things in the project's success. Project managers discussed the broader project picture together, while technical experts focused on resolving technical issues.
"Vuolearning's technical team quickly came up with solution proposals when issues arose, which was great. For example, we could have been discussing how to make an integration work and we would exchange ideas in Teams or in a meeting for a while, and soon we already had a plan on how to move forward," Sollasvaara explains.
A clear overall vision had been created for the system procurement, which guided the process from the beginning: what was needed and what was being sought. Naturally, the plan evolved as the project progressed, and before the rollout there emerged a couple of new wishes for functionalities that Vuolearning did not initially have but which were decided to be implemented as a part of the project, such as an external training calendar and group development discussions.
"The fast pace challenged us quite a bit. In addition to implementing a new system, we had to figure out how to transfer data from the old learning platform to the new system and determine which data should be archived. Then again, it was also beneficial to carry out this cleanup, as the old system contained a lot of material that needed to be removed or updated," Saari says.
The implementation process included the implementation of several integrations. The goals was to have a longer-term view of the overall solution and achieve concrete time savings in everyday work. Through integrations, completion records could be transferred between Vuolearning and other systems. Personnel data and organizational structure are imported from the HR system, giving supervisors up-to-date visibility into their own teams.
When completion data is transferred automatically, employees no longer need to print certificates from other learning environments, and supervisors no longer need to manually transfer the certificates into the HR system, saving working time.
"Now that data is being accumulated in one place in Vuolearning, we can truly see what kind of competencies we have. We can also combine data, which gives us a better overall visibility into competencies - both for management and supervisors, but also for each user regarding their own skills," says Sollasvaara.
Previously, the situation was very fragmented for supervisors, as the employees completed courses in different learning environments and the completion data did not transfer automatically. Now, completion data is centralized, and the supervisor can track their team's progress through the team page.
At the wellbeing services county, the Vuolearning platform is used across the entire organization, which means approximately 8000 employees. Units also have the possibility to invite students or other external individuals, such as temporary staff, to the platform, enabling them to develop their competencies or participate in internal trainings.
Currently, the platform is used in the wellbeing services county for competence development, learning, course completion, announcing and registering for the organization's internal trainings, development discussions, and improving reporting and visibility.
From the start, the wellbeing services county of Päijät-Häme has had strong user adoption, and people have actively started to explore the possibilities provided by the platform. The first features to be introduced included courses, training calendar, and development discussions. The trainers find the training calendar easy to use, and development discussions have gotten off to a good start.
Learning paths are a completely new feature for the organization and they have now been actively adopted as well. Supervisors have become interested in the paths, as they provide a clear, centralized view of everything included in the onboarding and what needs to be completed in each unit.
"Previously, supervisors spent time directing employees to different learning platforms where courses were located. Now they can simply guide the employees to log into Vuolearning, where they find a learning path that is tailored for them," says Saari.
The platform has only been in use for about six months, yet the content creation has already been very active. There are currently over 243 courses and 138 learning paths. When one department was highlighted internally for creating learning paths for all its units, units in other departments were inspired to do the same.
"When someone has the courage to test the new features, the word spreads and others get ideas about how the platform can be used," Saari explains.
Support requests come from users daily, but most are resolved internally. When needed, issues are escalated to Vuolearning's support, who provide quick, comprehensive, and solution-oriented responses.
The platform includes features that the wellbeing services county has not yet implemented. The idea of the platform rollout was primarily to ensure continuity of existing functionalities. The adoption of the platform's features will continue gradually. In the future, the use of Vuolearning will be expanded to include competencies and competence profiles. The goal is to identify the employees' competencies within Vuolearning and transfer this data via integration into the workforce management system. To achieve this, the organization must first define what qualifications and competencies exist in the organization and what is required to achieve these competencies.
Additionally, the wellbeing services county is working with Vuolearning to develop the platform's new AI features and testing how they could be utilized. Standardizing onboarding trainings on the platform is also on the agenda for 2026.
Overall, the implementation of the system was considered highly successful.
"All parties felt positive about the project. The project team included skilled and capable people, along with flexibility on both sides. These are key factors when working in a changing environment and aiming to complete a project on a tight schedule," Sollasvaara concludes.