Better management with Keva’s new Pulssi service

Occupational pension insurance companies aim to extend working lives. Keva, a public sector occupational pension insurer, wanted to offer its customers stronger support for capability management and improve their experience of the support’s benefits.

Keva wanted to create a new digital service for its customers’ management. The aim was to create a service that all Keva’s customer organisations would want to use. The challenge was the heterogeneity of its customer base: the everyday routines of the police, the rescue services and early childhood education institutions differ significantly.

With Solita’s help, Keva implemented the digital Pulssi service, which helps HR specialists and managers in public organisations in information management and react more sensitively to early signals. The Pulssi service provides up-to-date information on employee well-being and various triggers to support development work.

We need more fast-paced data

Solita’s team started in daycare centres, which face a wide range of staff retention and availability challenges. The team had formed a set of hypotheses beforehand and prepared the interview questions. It quickly became clear that measuring the employee’s experience in real-time was triggering.

Early on Keva and Solita recognised that the public sector managers needed more real-time data on the well-being of their work communities. Previously, Keva had assessed the well-being situation through annual staff surveys.   

“We found out that surveys were too infrequent. The managers also needed an anonymous tool to communicate and catch early signals,” says Solita UX Designer Aki Ilveskari.

Users involved in the design

Solita designed the concept of the Pulssi service for Keva and was responsible for its UX design in a multi-vendor team. Listening to people and designing the service based on their ideas helped to build a service that people want to use.

Today, the service is already used by over 50 organisations and 100,000 people across the public sector.

“IT or service development projects rarely get so close to the people in rescue services and nurseries. We’ve received a lot of praise from customers for being involved in the development and for the fact that the service really helps them to manage their people,” says Keva’s Rissanen.

The Pulse service provides valuable help for managers

Keva wants to offer public sector employer customers a range of digital services and coaching that can be used by HR departments. The Pulssi service gives managers an important tool to sense things that would go unnoticed in meetings, development discussions or in the corridors. 

“The service gives managers a mirror. If someone isn’t feeling well, the information is passed faster than in everyday life. It also gives a voice to those who are silent. They can speak anonymously and safely. This is a big thing,” says Solita’s Ilveskari.  

More agility by asking the right questions

What was special about the Pulssi service was its agile implementation. In just months, the service was successfully implemented and further developed. The key to the agile approach was to identify mistakes early on.

“If you don’t know something, you find out and ask questions before moving forward with technical development. We were able to develop this angle further and are now even more agile,” says Keva’s Rissanen.  

The project had a multi-vendor team, with Architects, Software Developers and Service Designers all working together. According to Keva’s Rissanen, this enriched the Project Manager’s work: “Cooperation was smooth, with good people who openly brought their own perspectives to the table.”

A clear vision brought the spirit of doing

According to Keva’s Rissanen, the cooperation with Solita was people-oriented, humane and competent. The success of the project required not only technical skills but also social skills.

In the future, new content will be added to the service package, such as learning and support for managers.