Emma Niskasaari, who works as a consultant in the Digital Transformation business unit, began her career at NHG in 2021. Before this, she had worked within the social and healthcare sector as a physiotherapist, then realized her true passion lay in developing the healthcare industry and began working for a joint municipal authority where she developed digital services. This was the first time she had the chance to work with digitalization of social and healthcare – and she was sold on it! Emma next decided to apply for a specialist role in digital services within occupational healthcare and to deepen her knowledge through a master’s degree in health administration.
Emma first came across NHG during her studies via different publications and surveys that the company had produced. In particular, she became interested in the theme of value-based healthcare that NHG was advocating for. As she became more familiar with NHG’s work, Emma became interested in consulting, and in particular from the perspective of a professional service firm regarding issues that she had already worked on from the service provider’s side. She eventually applied to NHG through an open application and started her career as an analyst in early 2021.
She describes her current role as an analyst as versatile and interesting, where she especially likes the wide range of projects. Emma’s work mainly consists of projects for public sector actors, such as welfare regions and ministries. She has had the opportunity to work extensively on the current Finnish social and healthcare reform process and the ICT changes involved. Her projects have included planning, coordination, and facilitation to support various welfare regions and ministries in the changes brought on by the reform.
Emma points out that there is no better time to work in the social and health sector. “The current social and healthcare reforms are the most significant in Finland’s history, and it’s great to get to be a part of it!” Emma adds that she values being in a position to get first-hand information about the latest ICT changes at the national level and then get to work on them. As part of the preparations for the reform, the digital transformation team got to build a roadmap for regional implementation for the welfare regions. These roadmaps have been worked on ever since, and have proved to be very useful in various areas of planning and monitoring the change.
Emma’s experience in designing digital services has also given her a broader interest in designing services for clients, and as a result, she also works a lot on various service design projects. Thus, Emma helps clients in integrated healthcare design development of their digital services. This includes, for example, mapping her clients’ customers’ experiences through interviews. The data obtained can then be used to visualize the customer journey or processes for the client organization.
Customer work is a big part of her job. In addition to independent work, her projects often involve a lot of workshops and meetings with various clients, and she notes that this part of her work is often very rewarding: “It is very interesting to hear a client’s experiences and perspectives and engage with them. The best part of the workshops has been when you’ve gotten the participants to have a real conversation with each other that has produced valuable and concrete results.”
In Emma’s opinion, the sense that the work she and her colleagues do is one of the biggest motivators at NHG. For Emma, it’s important to be able to make a difference in issues that are important to her – in this case within the social and healthcare sector, and therefore people’s health and well-being. She adds that the flexibility of her work schedule and the wonderful people she works with also contribute greatly to her job satisfaction. Flexibility has helped her a lot in combining work and family, while coffee breaks and outdoor meetings with colleagues help her to cope and bring joy to her everyday life.
Emma also values working closely with colleagues who have such a deep knowledge of the field: “We have a tremendous amount of knowledge within the company, and I find that I always learn a lot from each colleague and project. It’s also a relief to know that you can always get help regardless of the subject, as there are experts in every field and everyone is genuinely willing to help and support each other.” Emma points out that the culture of supporting and helping each other applies to everyone – whether you’re more experienced or at the beginning of your career.