This year has been all about updating VALA’s strategy. I’ve been involved from an HR perspective, and I wanted to share some personal insights into the process.

Laying the groundwork

This hasn’t been a quick or easy task. We’ve invested a lot of time and effort into gathering data – both from within VALA and through external workshops and analyses. I personally dove into our company’s historical data, analyzing everything from employee numbers and turnover rates to exit interview feedback, recruitment data, and the past four years of employee satisfaction surveys. We also took into account our cultural analysis, onboarding feedback, data from our occupational health partner, and VALA consultant feedback.

All of this and several other pieces of information helped us shape six key strategic streams during our workshops. I’m particularly proud that three of these streams focus on our people, their well-being, and their development – a concrete example of VALA’s commitment to putting employees first.

Bringing everyone on board

After the first workshops, we held a company-wide session where everyone had the chance to contribute ideas to two of the strategic streams. I’m the facilitator for one of our streams. In the workshop facilitated by me, the goal was to envision VALA in 1.5 years:

• What would make VALA the best workplace in Finland, in your opinion and others’?
• What are the biggest challenges we need to address? Are there any concerns or questions that need attention?
• What goals would we have reached?

When asked to describe the optimal future VALA, VALA people used words like:

• Caring
• Supportive
• Enabling
• Bigger
• Leaner
• Trustful
• Positive
• Welcoming
• Visible
• Cool
• Well-known

What’s more, VALA people hoped we’d keep the things they already love about VALA:

• Our caring, people-first culture
• The pride we take in our professionalism
• Transparency about our financial status and activities
• The ability to choose and change projects
• Our focus on client software
• Our yearly cycle of VALA events
• Our open communication and lack of hierarchy

Areas for growth

Of course, there’s always room for improvement. VALA people highlighted areas where they’d like to see VALA grow in the next 1.5 years:

• Increased participation in conferences to boost our brand
• Better benefits
• A more strategic customer base with more interesting projects
• Fewer people working alone on projects
• More consultant’s involvement in the sales process
• More opportunities for internal projects and pro bono work to foster learning and development
• More user-friendly and up-to-date hour reporting system
• Expanding our portfolio to include more international and strategic clients

An overview from my perspective

The responses painted a great picture of what our people envision for VALA’s future: a larger, more reputable company known for its positive and supportive culture, where employees feel valued and empowered to do their best work. They also highlighted the importance of maintaining the aspects of VALA they already love, like our transparency, collaborative spirit, and focus on client success.

Personally I think we have a strong foundation to build upon for future growth. What’s most exciting to me is that all of these ideas for improvement are achievable with consistent effort and dedication. I truly believe that VALA has a bright future ahead, and I’m thrilled to be a part of shaping it. 

What’s next?

This text was more about our strategy process and findings. However, the strategy is ready now and we have already started the work towards our new vision: Greatest Quality Company in Finland. 

My strategy stream, called “Best place to be for quality-minded people”, has already started working with our task list. The task list consists of eight tasks, all with responsible persons and deadlines. 

And how are we doing now? Well, our last eNPS (i.e. how willing are VALA people to recommend VALA as an employer) score was a whopping 84! The scale on this is from -100 to 100; we realize this is almost on the max level for us or for any company, thus now our aim is to simply keep working hard to maintain this great level.

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