Key partner Varma challenged students to develop services for work ability management

Varma Pension Insurance Company, Laurea's key partner, is responsible for the pension security of 900,000 people in Finland. At the same time, Varma is also a pioneer in work ability management, which helps companies take care of their employees' work ability.

Varma's work ability management services were at the heart of the student project where Varma and Laurea cooperated during the spring. The project was part of the Service Design study unit held in English, which included students from several different degree programmes and exchange students studying at Laurea.

Focus on small enterprises’ needs

In the project, the student teams were tasked with using service design methods to help Varma better serve its clients in managing work ability. In particular, the aim was to find new ways of providing information on work ability management services to small companies with fewer than 50 employees.

– Through this project, we wanted to obtain more information on the needs, problems and challenges related to the work ability of small companies. This information would allow us to find new ways of serving these companies in their day-to-day, say Development Manager Linda Lehto and Content Producer Eeva-Leena Honkanen, who work with digital services related to work ability at Varma.

Interviews with small and medium enterprises played an important role in the project’s progress. Based on the interviews, each team presented the ideas they had developed to Varma representatives and received feedback based on which the students developed a prototype to be tested for one idea.

– The cooperation with the students was excellent in the project, and the students had also learned about the whole concept of work ability management, with which many of them were unfamiliar at the beginning, Linda Lehto and Eeva-Leena Honkanen add.

Studying, listening and developing are key in service design

One of the teams participating in the project consisted of Amanda Heino, Ahok Kuek, Rajveer Chauhan and Bishal Gaire, and exchange students Maëlle Tanguy and Inès Guillemet, who study in Laurea's degree programmes in English. When interviewing companies, they noticed that work ability management and the related services were not very well known. This inspired them to come up with ideas for events and seminars related to the topic to increase awareness of work ability management services and Varma in general.

– The most important stage in the project was the interviews, and it also involved the greatest lessons in service design that this study unit offered: research and development are everything in service design and the most important thing is to listen to feedback from the right people, summarises Business Management student Rajveer Chauhan.

The students also had the opportunity to test the prototype they had developed and ask the companies for feedback on it.

– We received a lot of feedback and comments from both end users and Varma employees during the project. I believe that our idea will certainly be of great help to Varma, Amanda Heino adds.

Students’ ideas put into practice

Linda Lehto and Eeva-Leena Honkanen from Varma were also happy with the project's results:

– The results of the students' work definitely include things that we will use in the future. The work also reinforced many ideas and concepts that we had already thought about, Linda Lehto summarises the benefits.

In addition to the student project carried out in the spring, Varma and Laurea have been working closely together as key partners, and Varma will be happy to participate in various student projects in the future as well. Varma also offers students several internship opportunities. Additionally, several Varma experts have signed up to share their knowledge with Laurea students through visiting lectures related to various topics.

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