About the organisation
The Social and Labour Market Administration of Östersund Municipality carries out the work decided by the committee on the municipality’s social services for individual and family care, including the distribution of grants to non-profit organisations in the field, and handles grants from the social fund for general and children’s needs for assistance. It is also responsible for integration and migration issues as well as labour market issues and adult education.
By using Vocean, we could capture everyone’s thoughts more effectively, work together to arrive at solutions and use AI to create valuable decision support. With Vocean’s AI we could compile a comprehensive report at the end of our workshop, which saved us invaluable time and quickly gave us useful input for further work. You could tell that the participants enjoyed working in Vocean – they were not only engaged but also relieved to be spared the documentation work.
Karin RamströmHead of Sector, Östersund MunicipalityGoal
The goal of the workshop was to create proposals for efficiency improvements within the municipality. 30 managers in the Social and Labour Market Administration gathered for a workshop where they were to come up with solutions to the question:
How can we use our resources even better while maintaining or increasing the benefit to residents?
How it was done
Idea generation started before the workshop, when links were sent out to the participants, who contributed in advance to the material that would be worked on further during the workshop.
After a short introduction to the day, idea generation continued and each participant was asked to submit 7–8 ideas. The facilitators then asked provocative questions to get the creativity going, such as: “If laws didn’t exist, what would we have done then?” and “If we lost a third of our staff, what would we have done then?”.
Because the participants had already started generating ideas in advance, less time had to be spent coming up with ideas when the group met, and they could spend more time on discussion and co-creation instead.
The first step in the co-creation was for the participants to go through the list of contributions and like the ideas they agreed with. Based on the collected ideas, Vocean’s AI could identify 4 categories. The participants then liked 2 ideas from each category, which led to a priority list for each category. The participants were divided into 4 groups, and the facilitators assigned each group one of the most liked ideas from each category. They co-created around these ideas, which led to 4 refined solutions for each category.
Finally, Vocean’s AI, Copilot, was used to produce a report. This AI report was then used as a basis for taking the proposed solutions further.
Engagement during the workshop was high. In total, more than 100 ideas were collected and narrowed down to the 4 refined solutions for each category. In the survey sent out afterwards, several participants described the session as fun, creative and inspiring, and expressed relief at being spared the documentation work afterwards.
Benefits
Preparation freed up time for co-creation: Idea generation could start before the workshop, which freed up more time for co-creation and resulted in more refined, well-developed solutions. Democratic prioritisation: By liking the ideas they thought were best in the Vocean platform, the group got a direction for what they should spend time discussing and which ideas should be developed into feasible solutions. AI summary: Vocean Copilot was used to generate a report that could be used as decision support and saved time that would otherwise have gone into compiling it manually.
In brief
Östersund Municipality’s Social and Labour Market Administration ran a successful workshop aimed at making more efficient use of resources while maintaining or increasing the benefit to residents. By using the Vocean platform for preparatory idea generation and democratic prioritisation, the participants could focus on co-creation during the workshop itself. With the AI tool Vocean Copilot, a comprehensive report was compiled, which saved time and made the continued work easier. The workshop resulted in four refined solutions per category, and the participants appreciated the innovative and engaging way of working.
