• January 12, 2022

Valamis’ 2021 Highlights and Goals for 2022

Here at Valamis, we slowly began to see each other in-person again in 2021. The year brought back collaborating with co-workers in the office again, in-person industry events, travelling and fun celebrations. The Valamis team continued to grow this year and we learned to overcome challenges together. Without further ado, let’s take a look back at what 2021 looked like for Valamis.

2021 Highlights

Valamis won awards and received recognition from top analysts

Valamis’ Continuous Growth and Performance Recognized by the 2021 Fosway 9-Grids™:

“I’ve gotten to know Valamis and I’ve been really impressed with the company’s strategic focus on the entire solution, its ability to provide consulting and the end-to-end platform that Valamis has built.”

– Josh Bersin in the webinar “How to Build an End-to-End Learning Ecosystem for Today’s Workforce”

Valamis Announces Acquisition of The Working Manager to Redefine Internal Career Development

This was an exciting year for our growing team as Valamis announced the acquisition of The Working Manager (TWM), a leader in organisational performance and career mobility technology. Valamis and TWM joined together and unified technologies and in-house consulting services to offer businesses an end-to-end employee experience that helps employees develop and find career opportunities.

“The Working Manager’s technology, proven record of customer satisfaction, and most importantly their people, are a complete fit with Valamis’ longstanding values. With TWM’s internal career development platform, LMS, and LXP, we will enhance our current learning solutions for our customers and future customers. Together, our technology, partnership approach, and authenticity will give the market a solution that puts people first and helps customers every step of the way succeed with their business initiatives.”

– Jussi Hurskainen, CEO, Valamis.

The Working Manager Team

Valamis’ UK Acquisition Results in Recognition from Fosway and the LPI

“The LPI and, in particular, Gary Cookson has been very clear on the gaps that existed in TWM’s (Valamis UK’s) performance to achieve the Gold Standard 2 years ago. By making changes and improving key areas across the company enabled the Gold level to be achieved. Our customers and partners know that we work to the highest standards in the industry and to reach this level again for the second year in succession is a testament to the whole team.”

– Phil Purver, Valamis Country Manager for UK & Ireland (former CEO of TWM)

Valamis Integrated with Udemy Business to Bring Learning Experiences to Employees and Organisations Worldwide

Valamis announced this year an integration with Udemy Business, a curated enterprise learning platform powered by Udemy, a leading destination for learning and teaching online. The partnership has been able to provide Valamis’ customers with over 6,000 courses in English and an extensive collection of courses across eleven other languages. Organisations can now curate learning paths composed of Udemy Business courses, custom courses, and web links within Valamis’ end-to-end learning solution.

Customers Found Success with Valamis in 2021

Valamisians attended many virtual and in-person events

  • DevLearn 2021
  • Next Learning
  • Learning Live

Our Boston team travelled to Las Vegas, Nevada for the 2021 DevLearn event.

Valamis’ Dutch team attended Next Learning Event in the Netherlands.

Our UK colleagues at the Learning Live event in London, England.

Valamis also attended

  • Inspire HR virtual event
  • Learntec xChange
  • elearning Summit in Vienna, Austria
  • elearning Summit in Frankfurt am Main, Germany
  • elearning Summit in Zurich, Switzerland

2 papers and 4 templates published

11 webinars

Valamis & sustainability

Product development achievements

  • a new way to create and manage dynamic audiences.
  • Valamis App in MS Teams and integration into MS Teams webinar to give people easy access to their learning.
  • fully renewed reporting and analytics solutions with a vast range of further opportunities for more advanced learning analytics.
  • new learning content service providers: Udemy and getAbstract.
  • new eCommerce payment gateway Stripe.
  • Fastly CDN implementation for improved performance.
  • updated automated security controls with QualityGates and Dependency Audits.

2021 Valamis Statistics

Learning together

  • 160 new Valamis lessons – and we integrated with LinkedIn Learning, bringing us over 7000 curated lessons!
  • 7,907 logins to Valamis Learning Platform by our employees
  • 11,799 completions of micro-learning content

Developing together

  • 38 employees changed roles through internal career development
  • 8 participants in the internal mentoring program
  • 9 ValamisTalks – presentations by our colleagues – held during the year. Topics included customer cases, work culture in different countries, as well as presentations on different roles at Valamis.

1000 bottles of beer

1000 bottles of Valamis beer “Time” were brewed. Time is a citrusy, hoppy Indian Pale Lager, and is the 8th Valamis beer ever produced.

The beer label was designed by our Marketing Specialist (Benelux) Kulvinder Singh.

One wellbeing challenge

When you take care of your mental health, you feel good about what’s happening in your life, and you feel a sense of connection to others around you. During Mental Health Awareness month, Valamisians had the opportunity to participate in our wellbeing challenge where they completed small tasks for three weeks, from taking meditation breaks to getting outside for a nature walk.

Valamis Nestors

Every month, we celebrate our Nestors – the Valamisians who have been at the company for 3 or more years. They are the walking databases that know the company inside out! In 2021 we celebrated 38 Nestors who had 3, 5 or 10 years of working history with Valamis:

  • 7 people who have worked at Valamis for 10 years
  • 9 people who have worked at Valamis for 5 years
  • 13 people who have worked at Valamis for 3 years

Participation in Kilometrikisa

The Valamis team has traditionally participated in the Finnish bicycling challenge Kilometrikisa, which helps collect money for charity. This year, Valamisians did a fantastic job and bicycled more kilometers than any previous year!
The Valamis team had 35 members and during the time period of May 1st to September 22nd, and they:

  • bicycled 38 069,9km
  • saved 2664 litres of gasoline by biking instead of driving cars
  • saved 6660 kg of Co2-emissions
  • collected 1523 euros to charity for Finnish Red Cross

Valbo spent 2021 getting back out there with summer travels

  • Valbo Travels North
  • Valbo Tours Europe
  • Valbo Takes Flight
  • Valbo’s New Friend

Valbo travelled to Northern Finland to spend time outdoors this summer.

Valbo travelled with one Valamisian by car from Finland through Sweden, Denmark, Germany and into the Netherlands.

Valbo travelled high this summer in a hot air balloon ride with our colleague Alexander in Petrozavodsk.

Valbo spent some time cozied up to a new furry friend in Boston.

2021 also brought back in-person events across our global offices

  • Summer Parties
  • Holiday Celebrations
  • Boat Party
  • Halloween Party
  • Christmas Party

Valamisians across our global offices got together over the summer to enjoy the warm weather and spending time together again.

Our colleagues in Jaipur enjoyed celebrating Diwali together, complete with colorful decorations around the office, gifts from Valamis, and game of TAMBOLA followed by lunch.

The Boston team celebrated a summer back together by sailing around the Boston harbour on an old-fashioned tall ship.

Halloween was celebrated this year with a costume party, games and dancing.

In Oulu, our team got together for a holiday celebration and Christmas card workshop to help spread the holiday spirit!

Looking back

Valamis CHRO Maria Vihtkari summarised the year 2021 for us:

“2021 was (again) a year of changes. We focused our leadership on change and empathy, while in the middle of ongoing changes in the business environment with the pandemic and unprecedented risks. We learned to transform and overcome challenges with a focus on resilience, wellbeing, and leadership.

During the year 2021, we focused to strengthen employees´ wellbeing with different actions. According to the 2021 Employee Wellbeing Survey, 88% of our employees agree some level to the statement “Employee wellbeing is fully supported in our company”. We were able to bring face-to-face meetings back and strengthen our sense of community. During the year, we also made learning easier and more available for every employee with a LinkedIn Learning integration to our own Valamis LXP. We believe that when employees are financially invested, they want to work. When employees are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.”
– Maria Vihtkari, Chief Human Resources Officer

The Vision for 2022

“We have a really exciting roadmap set for 2022. What is most interesting for me personally is that we are going to further increase the intelligence of our platform and utilize machine learning more broadly in our end-to-end capabilities. We have also set up ambitious goals for growth, which we are going to be busy fulfilling throughout the year. “
– Jari Järvelä, Chief Visionary Officer

*It is with deep regret that, since publication, Valamis has now closed the Petrozavodsk office due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.