New Hansel employees became a part of the remote community

Nina, Oskari and Tiina came to Hansel in the exceptional year. Tiina had worked for a few weeks before the recommendation for remote work entered into force. Nina and Oskari had not even started normal daily life at Hansel, and the three have never met face to face. Despite that, they are thankful that adopting into their new duties and a group of colleagues has been successful.

The service manager Tiina and legal counsel Nina were familiar with remote work from before. For Tiina, the commute from home is nearly 200 kilometres, whilst Nina has worked in international organisations where your co-workers are not necessarily even on the same continent. Tendering consultant Oskari was newer to remote work, but he also feels that it has gone well.

Smooth assimilation of basic work remotely

“I work in the digital team, so working online with the team is very natural for us. My work contains plenty of development, and it would of course be nice to talk about it and exchange ideas with a larger group on site from time to time”, says Tiina.

Nina and Oskari work in tendering, and they note that the cooperation between project groups has been smooth even on Teams. Everyone agrees that the largest challenge is trying to understand who does what, and who should be invited to which meetings, when you have never met most of the Hansel employees at the office.

“The house induction programme worked well, and I learned at least some of the faces through it. I also have daily talks on our legal team’s Teams channel and by phone with my closest colleagues. Some of these talks could even be called coffee table chat”, describes Nina.

Oskari estimates to have met approximately a third of his tendering unit face to face in the soon 10 months of his Hansel career. In his opinion, changing work in the exceptional times has been smoother than he thought beforehand:

“I came for similar duties as those I did in my previous job. That and familiarity with the used systems made the transition much easier.”

Both Nina and Oskari have found it nice that you never work on tendering alone at Hansel, but are always a part of a larger group. All three new Hansel employees value that they have received plenty of support from their colleagues and that the atmosphere is helpful, even remotely.

Diverse duties in a competent group

Tiina used to work for a service provider, and she has found the transition to “the other side of the table” pleasant.

“When you make development work for your own organisation, you can work on a wonderfully long-term basis”, Tiina rejoices.

Oskari knew Hansel fairly well after a long history of working in procurement.

“The colleagues are just as competent as I expected, and the projects interesting and nicely varied”, he summarises his experience of the first year.

Nina also enjoys working as part of a community of hard-core experts:

“Our brilliant digital team has been particularly helpful in starting work, who keep work equipment in mint condition every day.”

Now that they have got the hang of their work tasks and Hansel as a company is starting to be familiar, the new Hansel employees are looking forward to returning to a more normal daily life and getting to know more colleagues, even though they praise how versatile their workdays have been even in the remote conditions. For now, personal news are shared mainly on Teams, but surely soon they will take place in Postitalo’s pleasant working environment.