Job Market Finland has been created in cooperation

Job Market Finland, which has already been published as a trial version, is built with the resources of the employment and economic development administration. However, it is not just a service provided by public administration, and its use does not impose any obligations. Even though official services related to employment will become part of Job Market Finland at a later stage, the focus of the service lies elsewhere. We think that the matching of jobs and employees, and making competence and employment services accessible through a personalised matching of services will continue to be the most valuable content of Job Market Finland.

Reference groups as a pillar of co-development

Our goal is to ensure that Job Market Finland offers an easy and intuitive user experience and is also useful to both its users and other actors in the world of work. For this reason, we have cooperated extensively with our network and involved partners and future service users from the outset.

The customer and cooperation groups, or reference groups, of Job Market Finland have played a pivotal role in developing the customer experience.

Customer understanding and user needs have been gathered through participatory workshops, interviews and surveys; possible implementation solutions have been evaluated and tested in user tests and interactive discussions. At the moment, the reference groups contain a total of approximately 500 individual and employer customers, as well as representatives of service providers and administration.

From the very beginning, approximately one and a half thousand people in total have participated in the joint development of Job Market Finland. The work has progressed in accordance with the development roadmap and the implementation of Job Market Finland. Customer experience work is an integral part of the process of defining Job Market Finland.

According to the development priorities, the largest amount of cooperation has so far been done with individual customers. Now that we are preparing the Job Market’s regional outlook and supply, the role of service providers and public administration in co-development is increasingly important. Experts of the TE Office have also been strongly involved and they have highlighted development needs from their own perspective.

Cooperation is reflected in the result

Of course, the numbers alone are not essential in co-development. What is significant is how the outcomes reflect the cooperation and the resulting customer understanding.

The key functions for Job Market Finland’s personal and employer customers, that is, creating job applicant profiles and job postings, have largely resulted from co-development. Interface solutions have been prepared and new business opportunities have been envisioned with service providers. Public administration and regional actors in the world of work have been involved, as Job Market Finland must also be useful for its network partners and their customers. The colour scheme of Job Market Finland and even the final decision on the name of the service have been made in cooperation with customer and cooperation groups.

Next, the results of co-development will be visible in the version update at the end of the year. For example, the job applicant profile and its creation will become considerably easier and more visual. The creation of a job posting will also be renewed in terms of its structure and content. Improvements have been made based on user feedback, and new development ideas have been discussed and evaluated also in customer groups.

We underline the importance of transparency in our development activities and hope that our customers and partners will continue to participate in the future. Only in this way can Job Market Finland become a truly significant service for its users and part of people’s working life at all its stages.

Merja Heinonen

Senior Specialist, KEHA-Centre / Job Market