The 10 Most Empowering Women in Business, 2021

The 10 Most Empowering Women in Business, 2021
When passion meets purpose, it altogether
becomes a fuel that drives people towards their
specific goals. Johanna Pystynen’s passion to
help organizations increase their agility and make working
life more meaningful, sensible, and productive for
everyone, led her to become a CEO at LaaS Company, a
digital product family for all workplaces
Dared to Innovate
The story of LaaS begins in Finland in 2012 when Johanna
Pystynen joined IT company Vincit as HR Director. The
team created a modern and agile leadership model and
wanted to find a tool that would support this new mindset.
However, all the HR tools available on the market were
company-focused, and not developed to help employees. As
an IT company, they decided to create a platform of its own.
This platform led Vincit to be a three-time winner of the
Best Workplace in Finland Award, awarded as the Best
Workplace in Europe in 2016, and rated among Fast
Company’s global Best Workplaces for Innovators 2020 -
list. Soon, several organizations wanted to adopt the same
agile leadership models that Vincit had been awarded for.
To help others make self-organization as easy as possible,
the company wanted to share their digital platform with the
world. This is how LaaS Company was born.
In December 2020, Johanna left her place at the Vincit
executive team to drive LaaS to its full potential. At the
moment, a team of 10 professionals from the fields of
software development, organizational psychology,
management, and educational studies, and service design
are striving to meet the growing demand.
LaaS is a digital HR platform that helps organizations
update their whole toolkit to meet the needs of modern
working life, based on the Leadership as a Service
philosophy. This agile, co-organized, and data-driven
platform helps companies lead employees’ well-being,
competencies, and employee experience, offering tailored
support and services to meet individual needs. It has been
awarded as HR Tech 2021 Winner by Talent Culture and
Top 10 Employee Wellness Solution.
Building Employee Trust
Johanna is of the opinion that companies won’t succeed in
the revolution of work if they don’t focus on employee
wellbeing and employee engagement. This is often built-in
in start-up cultures, but it gets more difficult when the
company grows. Companies really have to start putting
effort into developing a positive culture and creating
structures that enable and maintain this.
In Johanna’s words, “It is a prerequisite for success. To
tackle the constant changes in the operating environment,
small and big, we need to have a platform to try new things
and learn fast, to collect data on what works and what
doesn’t, and to focus resources on the right things. In HR,
too much is done based on guessing and this needs to
change. We need to learn to lead with data.”
She adds by saying, “At the same time, employees can’t
thrive in the demands of self-organization unless
workplaces start to focus more on providing possibilities to
actually lead themselves. With digital tools, we can provide
information, data, and understanding for the employee on
the other hand about their wellbeing and competence and
on the other hand on the company needs and vision.”
Taking above situation into consideration, the company has
built a LaaS model to help its employees to lead their
wellbeing, network, and share their expertise over team
borders. This Leadership as a Service model allows
everyone to choose from its “internal marketplace” the
support that best meets their individual needs. Employees
are treated as "internal customers" and active consumers,
enabling them to solve their problems instead of passively
waiting for help. The key is to encourage employees to take
ownership of their wellbeing and employee experience and
learn self-leadership skills.
‘‘
Vincit is a three-time
winner of the Best
Workplace in Finland
Award, awarded as the Best
Workplace in Europe in
2016 and rated among Fast
Company’s global Best
Workplaces for Innovators
2020 -list.
‘‘
www.insightssuccess.com
July 2021 | 15