This year, the University of Helsinki's Working Life Act of the Year Award was given to the work-life network established for the Bachelor's programme in Applied Psychology and the Master's programme in Organisational Psychology.
The award was received by the Degree Programme Director Teemu Rinne and Corporate Cooperation Liaison Manager Heidi Lindholm.
In the award criteria, the work-life network was praised in particular for its cooperation between the Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Social Sciences and different sectors, for its innovativeness and the consideration of work-life relevance in the development of education.
"It's absolutely wonderful to receive such recognition for our team's work. Over time, I've often noticed that we are doing something new and unique in many respects. It's nice that, propelled by the award, we can share information about our work with others," Rinne commented.
The planning of the new degree programmes inspired cooperation
The work-life component was built from the start in cooperation with the university services' community relations team. Representatives from the corporare cooperation team and the alumni team have been involved since the beginning.
"The most important thing was to consider work-life and corporate cooperation right from the Curricula stage. We wanted to create as many career path models, traineeship opportunities, case materials, and other support for student employability as possible," Lindholm stated at the spring meeting.
To support the work, university partner and alumni networks were mapped. Alumni and corporate partners identified as an important target group were those with a Psychology background. Selected individuals were contacted, and through these contacts, a network was formed, culminating in a workshop held in March 2025.
"About 30 people participated in the workshop: alumni and other representatives from the work-life sector, students, and university staff. Present were, for example, HR directors from OP Financial Group and Barona. The opportunity to influence the creation of new degree programmes was so inspiring that we received more participants than we expected," Rinne and Lindholm described.
The network's work led to concrete forms of cooperation with work-life
Support from the university and faculty leadership, as well as the marketing team, has been essential in building the network. In the early stages of planning, the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Anu-Katriina Pesonen, played an important role.
"Gathering the network has taken time, but it has been incredibly rewarding to hear the views of work-life representatives. There is clearly a demand for our degree programmes," Rinne said.
The network's workshop resulted in numerous practical ideas. Many work-life contacts, such as representatives from Kone, will participate in teaching by sharing their career paths, and students will tackle real work-life challenges in courses. Network members themselves will also have the opportunity to participate in lectures.
"A highlight of the work-life network's activities is that Barona specifically recruited two summer employees from our bachelors students who have completed their first year of Applied Psychology," Rinne rejoiced.
The Bachelor's programme in Applied Psychology started in autumn 2024 and the Master's programme in Organisational Psychology will start in autumn 2026. The aim is to further intensify cooperation and build long-term and meaningful partnerships at the organisational level. One key form of future cooperation will be research collaboration.
