Rinnekoti: Empowering care with emotion

The emotions game brings up issues and topics which are often not voiced, helping the players to become more aware of an individual’s feelings and their impact at work. Through that the Rinnekoti employees are able to create emotional security and sense of home for their customers. This project served as a starting point for a larger cultural change in Rinnekoti.

Opportunity:
Providing services for a good life is a huge responsibility and often emotionally demanding, even for a healthcare professional. When it comes to disabled children with only limited ways to communicate their will, the responsibility is even more significant. This is why an important question was asked in Rinnekoti, a private foundation, with disabled customers: how could the interactions between disabled children and support workers be further improved?

Target audience: Rinnekoti support workers for disabled children

Process:
Diverse methods were used to get to the heart of the problem. The project began with visual ethnography: observing the interaction between the autistic and disabled children and their support workers. A detailed map of what was encountered during the study was co-created and the findings were further analyzed through semi-structured interviews. The fieldwork revealed that the focus first needed to be on the support workers who create the customers’ emotional atmosphere and security. As the co-creative process progressed, it emerged that each support worker had their own approach to interacting with the children, depending on their history, personality and learned practices.

Rinnekoti decided to search for new interaction methods, in which all emotions and even the most difficult questions could be brought up sensitively. The employees were genuinely enthusiastic about participating in the process and showed great team spirit during the workshops. From directors to support workers, everyone actively engaged with each step of the project. To enhance the customers’ psychological safety and to solve support work challenges, a gamified concept was created: a radical board game addressing the underlying issues of diverse emotions. We considered several different solutions during the process, but instead of a digital decided to go back to analogical.

Rinnekoti’s staff quickly learned to apply the methods themselves and built a service design playbook to further their cultural transformation as well as the educational materials. In addition to being actively played as a part of work, the game can also be used at internal events and meetings. It serves as an example of Rinnekoti’s culture in both recruitment processes as well as hackathons that aim to create new concepts for the entire care sector.

Impact:
The game has an impact across the organization, reaching over 1,000 support workers and through them over 1,200 clients. The game improves employees’ self-management and ability to identify and communicate about emotions. Their interaction skills improve as their understanding of human diversity and creativity increases. This progress is expected to form better functioning teams, boost the meaning of work, and enhance well-being at work. Through that the game also lifts the clients’ well-being and quality of life and reduces employee turnover.