How Sofokus is encouraging their people to learn and develop

Sofokus's core values are their people, learning, building trust, being brave and creating value. These values are incorporated into their daily activities and become a signature of their culture. Sofokus believes that motivation makes success and an individual's development is necessary to remain resilient and happy at work. One of their approaches to encouraging employee development is allowing employees to use work time for learning. In this so-called Sofokus Academy, the employees can join an internal project to learn new knowledge and use it in a real case. 

 "We want to encourage our people to develop simultaneously while working along with other learning possibilities. In the end, you learn best by taking the knowledge and putting it into action" - Milla Heikkilä.

Problem

Before using Talbit, Sofokus used Google Spreadsheet to manage the company’s OKRs, and no platform helped them support employee development. Their employees also felt that they didn’t have time to learn and lacked tools to measure learning progress. Thus, the excel file didn’t make projects or goals visible to everyone or allow them to connect their personal growth and see that they are making progress with their goals.

As people and learning are one of Sofokus's values, they want to ensure that learning opportunity is visible for every employee and that the best way to learn is while working, trying new things, or taking on challenging projects. In addition, Milla thinks that having a mentor inside the organization can help employees learn faster and tackle the challenges more effectively. 

How does Talbit solve Sofokus’s problem?

"Talbit OKRs is the clearest solution that solves the Sofokus problem in managing the company's strategies," - according to Milla. Sofokus developed their approach to take full advantage of Talbit's platform and say goodbye to their Excel OKRs - sheet. With Talbit OKRs, they see that goals are more visible and tangible for their employees. Thus, the employees are more serious about setting up goals and updating progress.

Specifically, Talbit's Agile Growth Plan products were what caught Milla's interest in trying Talbit. The Agile Growth Plan allows Sofokus' employees to be in charge of their growth, set clear goals, and align them with the company's objectives. Thus, everyone can see the progress and the impact of their learnings on the company's success.

"When people get something more tangible than vision and mission, it is easier to think about your purpose in that company." 

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Impact of using Talbit

On top of providing clear and tangible company objectives through OKRs, Sofokus's team was also able to develop an ongoing employee growth process and increase internal development awareness using Talbit. A key outcome of using Talbit has been creating a consistent way to see individual learning progress, talk about growth plans, and receive feedback. Although keeping up with learning and development requires personal efforts to set up a growth plan and keep track of the progress, they also see results from the employees' engagement with learning. 

Takeaways

• Adopting OKRs has allowed Sofokus to more fully embody its goals as a company and be able to communicate tangible goals.
• Sofokus is happy with improved alignment across the company and increased internal awareness of learning and development
• Having an agile growth plan helps everyone connect their growth with the company's objectives and keep track of their progress.