Using digital tools in my current job
I work as a welfare coordinator for a small municipality. My work is a varied combination of expert and managerial work. I use digital tools every day to acquire and transmit information. I follow the updates of various parties related to my work and respond to data collection surveys. I’m looking for welfare-related campaigns that I can market to local residents. For example, the Kilometer race that encourages cycling has just ended. The citizens of the municipality have registered cycling kilometers on the platform, which I manage, and the citizen who has collected the most kilometers will be rewarded.
One of my tasks is to inform the municipal residents about matters related to the municipality’s services and facilities. I usually do informing using the municipality’s website and Facebook. Through the same channels, I also get information and feedback from the residents, in addition to telephone and email, off course. A few times a year, I do surveys on various topics related to welfare. For that i have used Forms or Webropol. I manage the rental of the municipality’s premises with the help of the electronic booking platform called Timmi.
Many applications facilitate communication in various networks. I participate in a lot of remote meetings and trainings. Especially during the corona period, different platforms became familiar; Skype, Teams, Collaborate, Zoom. We often communicate everyday matters between members of the close work community using WhatsApp, and documents are worked on and saved in Teams or Sharepont. In my role as a supervisor, I use several different electronic tools to manage employment relationships.
Social media and other digital tools that I could use in my daily work
Visual communication is my big weakness. People younger than me seem to follow more videos than written text. That’s why I could learn how to use YouTube for informing and encouraging. With short videos, I could liven up my communication and maybe get my point across to a wider group of municipal residents. In addition to young people, for example people who have difficulties with seeing and hearing could benefit from communication containing images and sound. There are also many dyslexics who find it easier to receive visual and audio communication than written text. I don’t like to appear in pictures and videos, but because of my work it is important for me to make my face known. I am aware that once a video is uploaded to YouTube it will be there forever and therefore the content must be such that it cannot cause me or the employer any harm now or in the future.
In this course, I have created a blog for the first time. It made me think that in my work as a welfare coordinator, I could maintain a blog related to well-being. I could create the blog for example through Blogger or WordPress. In my blog, I could share thoughts and tips about how there are small and easy opportunities to support your own well-being in everyday life and near your own living area. Through the blog, I could perhaps get more personality and motions into the communication, than with updates on the municipality’s website or Facebook. To gain followers, the blog must be updated regularly and always find new interesting perspectives and visual effects. I know that it takes a lot of time and can be difficult to implement in my current busy job, but the idea is allowed to mature…
I have once used the Mural application in some meeting or training. It’s an interesting and active way to collaborate remotely. We could use Mural in remote meetings of our own team or in virtual meetings of different networks. In order for using the application to be really useful, everyone participating in the meeting must commit to using it. That’s why it is important to consider carefully in advance what kind of issues the tool will be used for and how the work will be instructed. There must also be enough time for working, so that even those who use the application for the first time can get involved in the work well.
In my work, I use such protected applications that require identification. Now I got the idea that instead of using my personal bank credentials to identify myself in work matters, I can ask my employer to install a Mobile Certificate on my work phone. At first I doubted whether the digiexperts at the workplace would approve the introduction of the application to the work phone, but I was positively surprised when it was possible! It is obvious that you must take good care of the work tools provided by the employer and follow the information security guidelines that are always in force. Carefulness is even more important when working with private or sensitive material of people or the employer. Or when using own personal data.
I have to admit that even though I have as a manager been recruiting new employees for several years and few years ago have been looking for a job to myself, I have not used the LinkedIn platform. Although jobs in the public sector must always be opened for search on public sites, you could use LinkedIn to find suitable employees to whom you can give a tip about an open job. Creating my own LinkedIn profile would make sense now that I am finishing my master’s studies and when both municipalities and welfare regions are currently looking for welfare experts for new interesting positions. If I create a LinkedIn profile, I have to make sure that all the information is always up-to-date – just in case someone would offer me a dream job through it!
Self-evaluation
I consider myself a very non-digital person. However, during this course I have noticed that even though I am not the biggest digiexpert, I already use quite a lot of different electronic tools fluently. Most of them make work or managing civil affairs a lot easier.
However, sometimes I wonder if all digitisation is only for benefit. Social media has its benefits, but also its disadvantages. Especially in young people’s lives, being liked or ignored, not to mention bullying, may define the young person’s whole life and well-being too strongly.
As a physiotherapist, I’m also a little concerned about what constantly working and being in front of devices does to our body. Sometimes you see that a trainee in the gym looks at his/her phone with neck bent almost as much as he/she does the exercises. Various applications that measure physical characteristics can in best case motivate us to exercise and take care of ourselves, but at worst they can lead to forced performance and excessive observation for our body and feelings.
Just as our ancestors once invented fire, which is ”a good worker, but a bad host”, so we must relate to new innovations. Let’s consider digitisation as a useful and safe helper and do not let it rule our lives.