City of Sundbyberg: The Management System for Social and Labor Market

In 2018, the City of Sundbyberg’s Social and Labor Market Administration worked intensively and purposefully with its new Management System for Systematic Quality Work. To support the work with the new Management System, they have used 2c8 Apps to visualize the business processes and Stratsys to work with planning and follow-up. In the spring of 2019, the new management system was finally completed and launched to excited employees. We talked to Ida Bäckström, Administrative Manager at the Social and Labor Market Administration, who told us about the work, challenges, and factors of success.

August 8, 2024

The City of Sundbyberg needed to clarify its work on Quality Management, among other things. They also wanted a more coherent overall picture of the organization. There was also a need among both employees and managers for a more structured way of managing the organization’s procedures, guidelines, and templates. The choice was to use 2c8 Apps together with Stratsys. Ida Bäckström, Administrative Manager at the Social and Labor Market Administration in the City of Sundbyberg, together with Caroline Nylund, led the project to create the Management System.

“It was unclear where employees could find different types of documents, and it was sometimes unclear whether the version of a document was the latest”, says Ida Bäckström

The project started in May 2018, and a preliminary launch was planned for January 2019. The process mapping was intensive during the autumn of 2018. As January approached, it was decided to postpone the launch until April 2019. This was to catch up with the processes that had already been decided would be completed by the launch. The initial plan for the launch was to map all core processes in the administration so that all employees could directly benefit from the system. Around 160 core processes were mapped and published at launch in the system.

“We have spent a lot of time on participation and information. We’ve regularly put out information about the progression of the Quality Management System in the administration’s monthly newsletter. At APT and administration-wide meetings, we also talked about the purpose and goals of the Quality Management System and how the process mapping is done. As many employees have also been involved in mapping the processes, they have also been able to inform their colleagues”, says Ida.

Process Mapping through Workshops

The work on process mapping has primarily been developed during workshops. People from different levels of the organization participated and worked together to create the processes. The number of participants per workshop varied, but the aim was always to include the head of the unit, the group leader, and at least one employee from each process. After each workshop, the Project Managers sent pictures of the jointly created processes to the participants so that they could easily go through them again and then come back with any changes or additions.

“2c8 Apps has greatly facilitated process mapping. It has been easy to draw processes and fast, which has been a prerequisite for being able to draw during workshops. We have mainly used process models but also used organizational models to describe the different units in the administration in more detail; it has provided more depth than the classic organizational chart”, says Ida.

Challenges with the Management System

According to Ida, one of the biggest challenges in implementing the new management system has been the time factor.

“It takes a lot of time to map processes in the way we have done. We, as Project Managers, have had time set aside for this, but the organization has sometimes, for understandable reasons, had to prioritize other things. We were lucky to have a committed management team that understood and emphasized the benefits of moving forward quickly without rushing through steps”, says Ida

After the Launch of the Management System

Ida feels that the employee’s response to the Management System’s launch has been very positive. Employees think it’s good that they can find everything in one system. The feedback from new employees has also been very positive, as it is easy to understand their tasks quickly.

Work on the processes will continue through further mapping. What remains is the mapping of certain support processes and the organization’s development around the management of the Quality Management System and its processes. The focus will also be on using the Quality Management System for both employees and managers. Ida emphasizes that it is essential that people with decision-making authority for the process are also owners of it. Therefore, they decided from the start that the unit managers own the core processes in their organization. However, during the course of the work, they realized that they would also need to appoint process managers who would be responsible for developing and updating the process, as the unit managers would not always be able to do this.

“We think it is important to emphasize that the quality system will never be a finished product, but that it is a system in constant change, just like our businesses, and that it is a shared responsibility that the content of the system is as good as possible”, says Ida.