– Being a manager at SJ poses pretty big challenges, says Henrik Månsson. You often have large employee groups with people who work very independently. For example, train hosts and train drivers do not necessarily feel that they work in a permanent community. You constantly change workmates during your travels. It is also difficult to gather your people. In such circumstances, digital tools play a major role and provide an opportunity for dialogue.
– With the app we can create a dialogue with people who do not have stationary job conditions and are very difficult to bring together in one place. We also step away from a large, annual survey to local dialogue where the managers themselves decide which issues are important to follow up on and develop. Being able to do employee dialogue through an app is also a natural part of our digitisation strategy.
Dialogue was also important when it came to developing the new app, says Henrik Månsson:
– We have made a real effort to involve the organisation in how things should work in the employees’ smartphones. Now we have a flexible tool where the manager can choose which questions they want to ask and go even deeper into specific questions if needed. At the same time, we have worked very consciously in terms of employee perspective. Their user experience must be a good one for us to reach the goals of our venture.