Riihimäki is located about 70 kilometres north from Helsinki. In this 60-year-old city, the Tavastian culture milieu meets current modern times.

We interviewed Sami Sulkko, the City of Riihimäki’s Mayor.

Starting point

“We had made a new strategy and some significant changes to our management system. However, we realised that we do not have the sufficient capabilities to carry these changes through.”

Why did they decide to get coaching from Hälsa?

“The HR management held a tendering process and selected you. This was based on the overall financial assessment as well as the references, where you had the best results.”

What was done?

Change coaching programme to our 27 social and healthcare sector’s supervisors as well as 100 other city supervisors.
The support measures used were group coaching, coaching of the social services and health care sector’s executive team, concretisation of the strategy and compiling the related projects (five meetings), three team coaching processes, several individual coaching processes.
The key advantage provided by the coaching?

“Your previous experience from other cases was clear and you were able to reflect it on our needs, and we were very happy with this. Open interaction, assessing pressure points and reviewing them. Strong expertise regarding the organisation’s change situation, development of leadership and the various pressure points, and your ability to solve these. The main advantage is that our organisation is now aware of the supervisors’ responsibilities in taking the strategy forward. Increasing shared understanding and communication requires continuous learning. The group’s understanding on what we are doing and how has improved, as has their own management capabilities. This can be clearly seen in the different work units.”

How was the coaching executed from your perspective as the client?

“We first went through the needs and boundary conditions. The whole training model was given positive feedback, and it was customised to our needs. I don’t know what could have been done better. Our own internal follow-up measures may have some room for improvement.”

Feedback from the trainees

“The themes were relevant and easy to apply to my own work. The involvement of the City’s executive team makes it feel like the middle management is also able to influence matters.”

“The coaching events made us think about and reflect on our own actions. Sharing things and brainstorming together with colleagues, led by the coaches, was rewarding.”