The Municipality of Eskilstuna has a Management Model that Clearly Connects its Vision with its People
The municipality has developed a management model that safeguards and develops its operating activities, as well as supporting the improvements needed to ensure its four-year strategic targets can be achieved. The management model also connects the municipality’s 8,500 staff with its vision.
Integrating performance management, HR and finances in one place is really valuable to us.Tommy Malm, Municipal Manager
Challenge
The Municipality of Eskilstuna has long valued innovation and bold solutions. In the 18th century, it formed a refuge for small enterprises to refine iron, steel and metals – and this pioneering spirit lives on today.
The municipality supports entrepreneurship and strives to achieve sustainable development from a social, economic and environmental perspective.
Eskilstuna is growing. With a population of 100,000, the municipality is one of Sweden’s 15 largest. To satisfy its residents’ demands for progress and the effective use of resources, the municipality needs a common direction and coordinated operations.
“Our employees are our primary resource. To succeed in achieving our targets, we need a process that makes use of their knowledge, ideas and drive,” says Tommy Malm, Municipal Manager at the Municipality of Eskilstuna.
With plans in mind for its vision, term of office and year, Eskilstuna embarked on a new journey. A key component of ongoing control for politicians and municipal staff is the “scorecard”, which is also used to coordinate all the processes within operations, and to keep ongoing planning and monitoring on track. Scorecards offer clear indicators of how far the municipality has come on its journey, and how well it is doing.
The management model unifies the operations of Eskilstuna's eight administrative boards and five corporations.
Summary:
- To cut the number of systems, managers need to use to control operations.
Solution
“It’s important for us that the information captured and compiled in scorecards is made quickly available to our politicians and first-line managers. A key step in improving our control has therefore been to procure a system that supports our management model,” Malm says.
To improve its planning and monitoring, the municipality selected Hypergene's product, with a phased implementation. The first phase was to improve unit managers’ support for HR, finance, budgeting and forecasting, as well as scorecards.
Eskilstuna prioritised its largest operations, which also involve many managers. Education was thus the first area for introduction of overall support for the performance report processes.
Another objective is to use Hypergene to create strategic plans and set strategic targets. “When we have all information in a single system, it’s easy to track things – to follow up on how our vision is being transformed into action, what our units and people are doing, and the results we are achieving.”
Summary:
Results
Currently, about 1,000 people are using Hypergene to plan and follow up on operations.
“This has enabled our municipal politicians and unit managers to track how operating activities are progressing,” Malm says.
The solution also offers vital support to other staff, who are at the heart of municipal operations.
“The scorecards, and the fact that unit managers can now get the necessary information quickly, simply and in an understandable format, help create a dialogue in our monthly workplace meetings on the results operations are achieving. We sign an agreement with every employee once a year, which sets out everyone’s contribution to our collective vision and the fulfilment of each unit’s targets. This is critical to success in the short and long term,” Malm concludes.
Summary:
- About 1,000 people use a single system to plan and follow up on operations, HR and finance.
