Summer employees are actively involved in the development of Kojamo’s operations. This year, the summer employees’ traditional idea competition was organised in sparring groups.
Kojamo organises an idea competition for its summer employees every year with the aim of innovating better urban housing in line with the company’s mission. At the beginning of this summer, too, the summer employees were given the task of coming up with ideas on how Kojamo and Kojamo employees could operate better in the future.
The assignment stated that the development ideas may be related to employees’ work routines or the company’s current business operations or that the idea may be a completely new service or product with which the customer experience of Lumo homes could be improved.
Unlike in previous years, this year’s summer employees were divided into sparring groups at the start of the competition. Each group consisted of summer employees working in different positions and in different locations, both those with previous experience and those working at Kojamo for the first summer.
Development ideas were presented to Kojamo’s Management Team at the end of the summer
The summer employees were instructed to send their development ideas directly to Kojamo’s Management Team for review. In addition, the groups presented their ideas to the Management Team and other summer employees in a joint ideas workshop at the end of the summer.
There were several dozen development ideas, some bigger and some smaller, and each of them was actively discussed. The Management Team members asked for clarifications and provided the summer employees with background information on the development stages of various projects.
More ideas emerged from the discussion. At the end of the workshop, summer worker Elisa Ojala presented her development idea related to guidance on housing for immigrants. She had not submitted the idea in advance for review, but was able to provide a background and summarise the need for it very well.
Best ideas were rewarded – it was difficult to choose one over the others
At the end of the ideas workshop, Kojamo’s Management Team met to evaluate the summer employees’ development ideas and select the sparring group that had come up with the best idea. It turned out to be very challenging to choose one over the others, so, to everyone’s surprise, the Management Team decided to reward the top three teams.
The brightest star was awarded to a group that had come up with ideas to develop operations in a variety of ways. This group had effectively solved everyday challenges and received praise from the Management Team for its excellent background work as well as for the development ideas that were in line with the company’s strategy and took into account the customer’s perspective. Among other things, their list of ideas included additions to the Lumo service offering – perhaps we will hear more about them later.
The members of the winning group were sales representatives Tuomas Kyöstilä and Noora Salo, property managers Jan Sihvonen and Aleksi Saari, and rental manager Jonna Liljamo. The group was delighted with the victory, but had also enjoyed the process of coming up with ideas together.
It was a pleasure to be part of a group that consisted of people with diverse tasks.
Jonna Liljamo, Kojamo’s summer employee
“Working with this group was nice and rich in ideas. There was no need to be nervous about presenting your own ideas and the cooperation seemed to run smoothly from the very first time,” Jan Sihvonen says.
“It’s easy to agree with that! It seemed that our group dynamics worked well from the beginning, and as things progressed, we got to know each other better and cooperation became even more natural,” Tuomas Kyöstilä continues.
“It was a pleasure to be part of a group that consisted of people with diverse tasks. It was fun to get to know the group members and hear about their summer,” says Jonna Liljamo.
The Management Team thanks everyone who participated in the competition for their brilliant observations and excellent development ideas. Some of the ideas were found to be directly applicable, while some of the proposals require a little work before implementation.