“Then it is important to have a good overview of the skills that exist. This is a prerequisite for being able to secure the supply of skills, identify skills gaps and the need for development.”
– Teodor Johansson Massaro, HR Consultant, City of Västerås
The system helped us through the corona crisis.
How do you gather your resources to be able to face a sudden crisis?
That question loomed in the winter of 2020 when the corona pandemic approached Västerås. The answer: The municipality immediately made a city-wide analysis of all the capacity that already existed, especially an overview of what is known as critical societal competence.
The corona pandemic has had a major impact on the municipality’s HR work. Several businesses were heavily burdened with sick employees and many who worked from home. It was still important to be able to handle all the different cases that still had to be carried out,” says Teodor Johansson Massaro.
He is a behavioural scientist and has been working as an HR consultant with the city’s recruitment and skills supply since 2017. Västerås is growing rapidly and with employees retiring, the forecast for the next few years points to major staffing needs.
Then it is important to have a good overview of the skills that exist. This is a prerequisite for being able to secure the supply of skills, identify skills gaps and the need for development.
Teodor returns to the word “overall” when he thinks about the future as well as describes the past year. What did it look like in the whole city? Västerås had been working with Comaea for several years and therefore had an advantage in that the tool was already in place to be able to identify the critical skills in society. It was easier for the municipality to see which units or activities the employees were in and who could contribute in various ways to managing the pandemic.
What do you do, when there is suddenly an extremely high level of absenteeism in various activities, with things that absolutely cannot stop?! The digital system became really useful during the crisis. We got a picture of the administrations, whether they were engineers or nurses or administrators – where was this special competence? Who was authorized to do what? Where, for example, were assistant nurses who at the time had other tasks but could be mobilized in healthcare?
Teodor also notes that the pandemic was the third crisis that required Västerås to mobilize its resources, after Västmanland’s major forest fire in 2014 and the influx of refugees the following year.
And this time, the system was in place to quickly map and analyze.
We have increasingly seen the value of having all the knowledge in place for preparedness.