Irene Bernhard and Kerstin Grundén
a first step to highlight the individual competence needs in order to find relevant competence development possibilities.
The working climate was very social and they learned from each other in both cases. The open plan offices facilitated communication among employees in the CCs. A municipality guide in case A comments that, both because the work is not strictly governed by checklists( less formal) and the working climate was very social, i. e., you learned from each other within the working group, she felt more competent now compared to when she worked earlier as a specialist at the back office, because she is now both a specialist within a certain area and a generalist in a broader area. This adheres to both Lave and Venger( 1991) and Parding and Abrahamsson( 2009), who argued that learning at work usually take place in“ communities of practice.”
6. Analysis and discussion of the implementation from the perspective of the handling officers at the back offices
Our results indicate that there is a need for increased focus on the back office when CCs are implemented. For many handling officers in the back office their work was changed due to the implementation and thus they had to learn and adjust to new work situations. Most handling officers received more time to work with the handling of matters, since they were no longer disturbed by incoming telephone calls from the citizens and businesses. They also had to handle somewhat more matters compared with before, due to increased incoming matters. Several handling officers at the departments in case A comment that they wanted to have more time for competence development within their specific competence area. Some handling officers missed the earlier spontaneous contacts with citizens, while others were satisfied with contacting the citizens themselves instead. The initiation of the work with handling of a matter had changed compared with before. Now the matters were transferred to groups of handling officers rather than being initiated by telephone contacts from citizens or private organizations. This change led to more co‐operations among the handling officers, and the organization became more process‐oriented. Some handling officers who liked to work very individually could have problems adapting to the more process‐oriented co‐operative work.
7. Conclusions
The implementation strategies varied in each case, and affected the pace of implementation, attitudes and motivation aspects, the mental view and understanding of the implementation. The implementation could initially be carried out quickly using a top‐down strategy, but could lead to problems of negative attitudes and lack of motivation due to no participation. There could also be problems with understanding the implementation due to lack of relevant information and participation. A more bottom‐up strategy with greater participation by the affected employees will take more time to carry out, but could contribute to a better understanding, and more positive attitudes and motivation.
The financing of the CC caused troubles for the contributing back‐office departments in both cases, but in somewhat different ways and in different phases of the process. It is important to anchor the applied financing models regulating the contribution of financing from the back offices at an early stage of the implementation process. The recruitment of municipality guides to the CC in case A, where they were handpicked by the manager, was successful while there was some negative reactions in case B with the initial recruitment process due to the fact that employees from the back office were recruited to CC against their will.
In neither case was the electronic information systems for handling of matters fully developed when the CC was first implemented, causing more problems than expected in using them. These problems initially affected efficiency and quality aspects of the work.
The implementation of CC contributed to a certain increase in the number of incoming matters, a fact that seemed not to have been foreseen by the project management. This increase was handled without an increase in resources.
As all incoming matters were registered in information systems for handling of matters, the managements received a new source of information regarding the needs of citizens or businesses. The potential of using registered information as a source for planning and decision‐making was not yet fully utilized in the municipality organizations, although some statistics were produced.
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