At the Employment-, Social and Health department in Thisted Municipality, they had a wish to improve the municipality services by working on the communication between citizens and professionals.

"We are good at implementing new laws in terms of working procedures and technical solutions, but if we want to enhance our service it is about something more than that. There is something very important in the meeting between the citizens and the system", says Lone Becker, director at the Employment-, Social, and Health department.

This was the reason Actee carried out a number of interviews with citizens, managers, employees and politicians about what constitutes a good municipality service. Based on the interviews Actee from an analysis, which was presented through several small videos from the interviews and held two workshops, where the employees worked with the findings assisted by the learning concept ActeeCommunication.

ActeeCommunication is a learning game, which contains game elements and theory, which revolves around the communication between the citizen/stakeholder and the professional. The concept builds on a philosophy that new knowledge sticks better if it consists of a combination of information input, exercises, and interaction. In the game, you work with eight different communication styles - and how these can be used to create better communication with the citizens.

”It was important that the analysis gave us some themes to work with and then the fact that it was presented through a series of videos. It is a very expressive way to convey the points and it worked extremely well. I especially noticed that it is very powerful to actually hear the citizens themselves talk about the experiences with Thisted Municipality", says Lone Becker, director at the Employment-, Social, and Health department.

The themes of the analysis were the base for employees and leaders to make action plans and identify the initiatives, which could contribute to keeping a focus on good communication. It has a high priority that the new knowledge can be easily transferred to the employees everyday working life, which the learning game ActeeCommunication really contributes to.

"The games are helping us keeping a focus on the communication and the relational aspect in the future. They play an important role in getting new knowledge spread out through the organization. And the eight communication styles are a very concrete tool that shows how to work with creating a constructive and good communication", says Lone Becker, director at the Employment-, Social, and Health Department.

”Actee comes from a different culture, which means that we have been challenged on some of what we do and how we think. It has been educational to be a part of this kind of cooperation because we want to be disrupted as an organization, so we can see things from a different perspective. And this has definitely given us some new angles”, says Lone Becker, director at the Employment-, Social and Health Department

Get an overview of our games here.