City of Heinola - Learning and skills development as the foundation for a thriving workforce and effective leadership
The Starting Point for the Strategic L&D Framework Project in the City of Heinola
In close collaboration with the City of Heinola, we demonstrated how co-development can build a shared understanding of the current state of Learning & Development, while deepening insights from multiple perspectives. By working together with management, staff, and key stakeholders, we were able to co-create, test, and refine solutions that are both practical and impactful.
For the City of Heinola, systematic Learning & Development is seen as a critical success factor in a rapidly evolving operating environment. Recognizing this, the city set out to develop a skills development model that not only strengthens staff well-being but also enhances leadership and management practices—laying the foundation for sustainable organizational growth.
The development project, “Learning and Skills as the Foundation for a Thriving Workforce and Effective Leadership,” launched with the City of Heinola, set out to create a strategic and forward-looking L&D framework for the entire organization.
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Designed as a practical foundation for both staff and leadership development, the framework supports supervisors in identifying and assessing skills needs more effectively. It also enables the organization to proactively anticipate future capability requirements and address potential work ability challenges before they arise.
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As Annika Blom, HR Manager for the City of Heinola, summarizes:
“During the project, we wanted to find ways to identify future skills requirements and gain a city-wide perspective on the L&D framework.”
The framework was also guided by the goal of harmonizing practices across different functions. The aim was to ensure that every employee in the City of Heinola has the opportunity to develop their skills in line with their individual goals—while keeping organizational and unit-level objectives clearly in focus.
Project phases
In the first phase of the project, current Learning & Development (L&D) practices were mapped, and the organization’s key capability areas were identified based on strategic priorities and employee survey insights.
Building on this foundation, the City of Heinola’s learning vision was defined, and the groundwork for a unified, proactive L&D framework was established. These goals were cascaded to units and teams through scalable dialogue models, translating the city’s strategy into concrete team-level capabilities.
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The second phase focused on designing and building the L&D framework itself. The objective was to create a clear, consistent model that equips supervisors with practical tools to lead skills development and foster continuous learning within their teams.
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A key shift in this phase was placing greater emphasis on learning in everyday work. The project highlighted that not all learning happens in formal training—day-to-day work plays a critical role in developing skills. Through workshops, the work environment was reimagined as a learning environment, and new ways to strengthen and streamline on-the-job learning were co-created in preparation for a pilot phase.
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The On-the-Job Learning in Teams 2.0 pilot was launched with seven teams to test and refine the approach in practice. The pilot explored key questions such as:
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How can organizational capability development goals be effectively communicated to teams?
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How can team leaders support the creation of shared, strategy-linked development goals?
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How can learning and skills development be more closely integrated into performance discussions?
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What practical methods best support on-the-job learning within the new model?
Alongside this, a renewed performance review approach—referred to in Heinola as the “success discussion”—was introduced and tested. This model shifts the focus toward recognizing employees’ strengths, achievements, and successes. By emphasizing positive feedback and jointly defining development directions, success discussions aim to strengthen motivation, enhance job satisfaction, and improve the overall employee experience.
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The new model also encourages employees to take a more active role in identifying their own skills and shaping their personal learning paths. Supervisors play a key role in this process by providing coaching and support, guided by the 70-20-10 learning framework to enable continuous professional growth.
Throughout the project, development work was carried out in close collaboration with key personnel from the City of Heinola, ensuring that the resulting model is practical, relevant, and fully aligned with the organization’s needs.
In conclusion
As a result of the project, the City of Heinola established a strategic and systematic Learning & Development framework that enables every employee and department to develop their skills—while ensuring alignment across the organization and respecting the unique needs of each sector.
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The model is supported by newly co-created practices and processes, designed to enhance consistency, transparency, and collaboration across functions. Over time, the impact of this work is expected to be reflected in higher employee engagement, a stronger sense of purpose at work, and improved leadership quality—ultimately contributing to overall career well-being.
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The journey continues. As the model evolves and pilot learnings are further refined, Heinola provides a compelling example of how organizations can turn strategic intent into practical, people-centered development. If you’d like to learn more about the compiled methods and follow the pilot’s progress and how things are moving forward in Heinola, the HR Manager Annika Blom, Director of Administration and Development Hanna Hurmola-Remmi, and HRD Specialist Elina Haverinen are excellent partners for brainstorming on all organizational learning themes.
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Do you want to learn more about our work?
Kuulas & Co is a design agency and training provider specialized in organizational development. We help our clients align their strategic skills needs with their employees’ career and learning aspirations. At the same time, we coach employees to become visionary developers of their own work and their work community.
Let’s shape the future of work together and learn together!
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