Emma Niskasaari started her journey at NHG in 2021 and now works as a consultant in the Digital Transformations business unit. Before joining NHG to develop the sector she is passionate about, she was working within social and healthcare as a physiotherapist. During her early years, she soon realised her true passion lies within developing the healthcare industry for better. She soon began working for a joint municipal authority where she got the chance to develop digital services. She was sold – Emma then decided to move further and apply for a specialist role in digital services within occupational healthcare and deepen her knowledge through a master’s degree in health administration.
Emma’s studies got her acquainted with NHG through different publications and surveys the company had produced. She became particularly interested in value-based healthcare that NHG was advocating for, and wanted to find out more about the company. After some research, Emma got interested in consulting and wanted to learn more about professional service firm’s perspective on issues she had already worked with on the service provider’s side. She decided to apply to NHG through an open application, and soon began her career as an analyst in early 2021.
Emma describes her work as versatile and interesting, where she especially enjoys the wide range of projects. Emma works mainly with public sector actors, such as welfare regions and ministries. She has gotten the opportunity to work extensively with planning, coordination and facilitation of the ICT changes regarding the Finnish social and healthcare reform process, through which she has gotten an exquisite chance to see first-hand how the implementation is advancing on a national level.
Emma mentions with delight that there is no better time to work within the social and health sector: “The ongoing social and healthcare reform is the most significant one in Finland’s history!” Together with the digital transformations team, Emma got to build a roadmap for the welfare regions to enable regional implementation. Ever since the beginning of the implementation, the roadmaps have proven to be extremely useful in planning and monitoring change and have been worked on ever since.
Emma also works with various service design projects. In other words, she helps her clients to design their services in a customer-oriented way, which can for example include studying the customer experience through interviews. The data obtained can then be used to visualize the customer journey or different processes for the client organization.
In addition to independent work, her projects often involve a lot of workshops and meetings with various clients. Emma feels that customer work is often very rewarding: “It’s really interesting to hear clients’ experiences and to be able to engage with them. The best part of workshops has been when you’ve gotten the participants to have a real conversation with each other and that the conversation has actually led to concrete results.”
Emma thinks, that this sense of meaning is one of the biggest motivators at NHG. For Emma, being able to make a difference through her work in issues that are important for us all is a big motivator. Lovely colleagues, on the other hand, bring joy to her everyday life and help her to cope. Additionally, the flexibility of her work helps her to combine work and family.
Emma adds, that it’s great to work with colleagues who possess 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 find help regardless of the subject, whether you are a more experienced professional or at the beginning of your career.”