Competent, enthusiastic staff enable success

Haaga-Helia staff developed their competence in line with our strategy by actively participating in internal and external coaching. During the year, staff participation in training was, on average, approximately seven days per person. Our staff also studied in degree programmes. Two Haaga-Helia employees completed a doctorate degree, one completed a licentiate degree, four completed a Master’s degree and one employee completed a Bachelor’s degree. In addition, three Haaga-Helia employees completed pedagogical studies.

Twelve staff members, sponsored by Haaga-Helia, study in a doctorate programme launched in 2014 in cooperation with University of Westminster, our partner. The support received from the Helia Foundation enabled two-month temporary work placements for 16 teachers. During the work placement period, the teachers work on a mutually agreed development project suited to the commissioning party’s needs. The placement taken in a company or a target organisation allows teachers to update and enhance their professional competence and the competence of the entire Haaga-Helia community.

Aiming for continuous development

The Pedaali programme for the development of teaching at Haaga-Helia, launched in 2015, ended in the spring under the ‘Communal operating culture’ development theme for the academic year 2016–2017. Our own experts from the School of Vocational Teacher Education and our campuses were responsible for planning the programme content and also served as programme coaches. All our full-time teachers participate in the programme, which is intended to support and enhance the teachers’ pedagogical competence, the successful performance of their basic duty and the achievement of objectives within the scope of their diverse and changing role as teachers. An outcome of the programme was the Haaga-Helia pedagogical vision, and we outlined team teaching as our shared operating model.

We map the preconditions of our strategy deployment regularly by means of personnel surveys. The development areas that mirror our operating culture, selected from among the results of the autumn 2016 survey, included the development of cooperation between groups and increased flexibility of operations. This development objective was integrated with our action plan, and the goal of the measures was to strengthen the sharing of Haaga-Helia staff’s competence, continuous renewal and working smarter.

Better results together

We promoted competence-sharing and cooperation across units in the thematic and joint development meetings designed by the steering groups of Haaga-Helia’s strategic core competence areas. All Haaga-Helia teachers and experts as well as some of our external stakeholders were invited to the meetings. The group meetings received positive feedback and continued in the autumn.

At the end of the year, we launched the Kohtaamo coaching in order to develop our cooperation preparedness and invited the entire Haaga-Helia community to attend. According to the feedback provided on the coaching, positive aspects included the opportunity to get to know colleagues from different campuses and units, in particular. Our goal is for cooperation in Haaga-Helia to be motivating and productive. It will guide our operations, and the Kohtaamo coaching will continue to work towards this objective in 2018.

We celebrated the 10th anniversary of Haaga-Helia in ten special events organised for our stakeholders during the year. In June, our staff gathered together to spend a relaxing afternoon with activities and good food in the centre of Helsinki. The annual staff Christmas party had a blue-and-white theme and a formal dress code in celebration of Finland’s 100 years of independence.

We organised competitive bidding on our HR information system service in order to reform the HR processes through digital solutions. The objective was to acquire a tool for the working community to use actively in diverse needs and to ensure that the system evolves and can be flexibly developed for future needs. We started the implementation of the system at the end of 2017.