DIGITAL TOOLS IN MY DAILY WORK LIFE
I work for an organization that provides social services. We are an organization that has been operating in Finland for a long time and has developed a wide range of digital services in recent years. Alongside traditional services, new needs are constantly emerging and digitalisation enables the innovation and production of new types of services nationwide. From the point of view of accessibility, it is important that digital services are accessible to everyone - regardless of time and place.
The Corona Pandemic also taught us workers to do independent work. Suddenly, in the spring of 2020, 2 expert parents and 3 school-age children worked around the kitchen table - all with their own computers. In the face of compulsion, though. And that too was found out. In recent years, we have developed digital services in our organization, e.g. to reach disadvantaged children and to support young people in after-care as they become independent. In my daily work, I do almost everything online. I work as a supervisor and my employees work all over Finland - digitalisation enables remote management. However, it is not an easy but requires a lot of self-management skills as well as confidence.Meetings are held at TEAMS, files are stored on a OneDrive server, surveys are conducted through Surveypal, emails are sent via Outlook, invoices are checked on Netvisor and travel invoices are approved using M2. Shift plans are made at Velho, so all paperwork has been abandoned for a long time.
Social media
We do not use social media during working hours for non-work purposes. However, more and more social media is also part of our daily routine. Contact with teammates is maintained through Whatsup. There you may be asked everyday for instructions on how to make a travel invoice, for example, or to put funny pictures from your home office or day walk. This tool has lowered the threshold for contacting and keeping in touch. Our organization maintains our organization’s official social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. We also benefit to some extent from the latter as part of our recruitment processes.
Five new social media tools for my work
TikTok
We constantly have to consider how best to reach our target group and our customers. The young people are in Tiktok, so it doesn't help that those who work with them also take better control of the tool. Videos can be fun or informative, but the message should be in a short and concise package. Definitely requires a lot of practice. Instagram In the same way, we could use Instagram as a channel for better customer information. As a supervisor, I find it challenging that we have hired strong social professionals, not all of whom have the skills to move partly to do their work on social media. Balancing between these two completely different worlds is challenging. Doodle I have used Doodle in my free time for hobbies, but it could also be better used to arrange appointment times in working life. You can enter the most suitable free times and send the list to other participants. The times that suit most respondents will be the selected meeting times. Google Forms We do some different surveys and collect data that could also be used in Google Forms. Our organization uses Surveypal software, but its use is not always justified as it requires a license from the user. Sometimes lighter Forms would certainly do its thing. Youtube Our social professionals organize a wide variety of trainings and seminars. The recordings of these could also be exported to Youtube, in which case they could reach completely new types of interested people.
Self evaluation
I think it’s a bit of a hate-love relationship on social media. it’s a lot of good, but as a mom I feel like it really has a lot of negative for growing children. Social media is addictive addiction and external pressures disruption can not really be said - what is true, what is fiction, where is the filter and can life really be just the Bahamas and bikinis?
The growing generation thinking about working life skills is much more willing for me and my peers to think about and come up with new opportunities for social media in working life as well. Maybe in the future it is not enough that you are a strong social professional but in addition you should have an eye to produce beautiful and informative content for social media. Personally, I still believe in real encounters and people-to-people interactions. For me, social media is more of a waste of time when there is really nothing else to do. But I much prefer to actually meet my friends at good food and the phone can be silent for me - I think I’ll get a lot more well-being from these moments.
