January 23 2019
The municipality of Tornio is a forerunner in the strategic utilization of health management. The work, started ten years ago, has yielded solid results.
Anja Huhtanen, HR Manager for Tornio, says that the Aino HealthManager has brought a more organized approach to dealing with, e.g., illness-related absences. Using the HealthManager SaaS service, the City is able to take a holistic view of the total processes in health management.
- For example, the City's early intervention program is now running as it's supposed to, pre-emptively and efficiently, says Huhtanen. The City of Tornio has 1,000 permanent employees and 300 temporary ones.
The greatest financial benefit has been the decrease in the municipal fees based on early retirement costs. While in 2010 Tornio had to pay €680,000 in fees, by 2016 that sum had dropped to €170,000.
- Over a long period of time, this means savings in the millions of euros. Also, the impact on illness-related absences is evident: for example, there were 18.7 sick days per year in 2015, with a notable drop in the following years, to 14.4 days in 2016 and 15.3 days in 2017.
Both supervisors and employees have been quite satisfied with the versatile HealthManager. - HealthManager has become our own way of taking care of these issues, Huhtanen says. Shop stewards have also seen the value in the use of the smart system.
- We've had feedback saying that introducing this model has been the best individual thing that HR has ever done in Tornio, Huhtanen says.
In fact, the model is so effective that HR is no longer needed to "put out all the fires," as different units can - using HealthManager - handle many things on their own, too.
When the collaboration between Tornio and Aino Health kicked off a decade ago, Aino made Tornio an unusual offer: if the set goals are not met, there will be no charge whatsoever.
- We had so much faith that the model would work, says Jyrki Eklund, CEO of Aino Health, looking back.
- Tornio was among the first municipal players to really comprehend what can be achieved via smart health management and the City is to be applauded for its open mind and determination, says Eklund.
For more information:
Jyrki Eklund, CEO Aino Health, Phone: +358 40 042 4221
About Aino Health (publ)
Aino Health is the leading supplier of Software as a Service solutions in Corporate Health Management. The company's complete system of SaaS platforms and services reduces sick leave, lowers related costs and delivers long term prosperity, increased productivity and employee engagement by adopting health, wellbeing and safety as an integrated part of the everyday activities. For more information, visit ainohealth.com.
