Heli Lallukka, Chief People Officer at Vastuu Group, leads people and culture development in a 75-person company providing trust services and SaaS tools that promote transparency, awareness, and fair competition – particularly in preventing grey economy practices. In recent years, the company has undergone significant transformation, including strategic updates and a cultural renewal. As part of this, they decided to engage the entire organization in a company-wide discussion about values. For this, Heli chose a gamified approach to support strategic value discussion.

Having prior experience with gamified methods and Topaasia, Heli selected Topaasia’ tool for value work. She highlights how gamification helps people focus on what really matters:

Games draw you in, even without competitive elements. The preparation alone was engaging. And in this kind of work, the process and journey are just as important as the outcome.

The game content was built on prior cultural work, where the team had already identified core cultural strengths and areas for development to support the growth strategy. From this, three core value pairs emerged: Courage & Entrepreneurship, Respect & Humanity, and Caring & Responsibility, forming the game’s first three themes in Topaasia. To introduce surprise and fresh perspectives, a fourth theme, Growth, was added to the bespoke game deck.

Condensing these themes into cards really brought us to the heart of what matters. The game helped us understand how well these values are already lived. Interestingly, when played the cards that were chosen the most, came from the Growth theme – this guided a new focus in our cultural development.

Heli’s team leveraged data from the game, including card selections, facilitator summaries, and player reflections:

Customer-centricity emerged as the most important theme. It became the pivotal insight on which we’ll now build our development roadmap.

Next, the company plans to design a new game focused specifically on customer-centricity and continue the conversation through the lens of growth.

The process also helped articulate the company’s values in a more actionable way:

In discussions, our values came down to three verbs: Dare, Care, Deliver. These now form the foundation for how we describe and live our culture.

In addition to value clarification, the game generated concrete outcomes. Internal facilitators hosted a company-wide Culture Day using a SWOT-inspired framework (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats).

The game event gave us excellent complementary data for our cultural SWOT, says Heli.

Employees were also asked to make personal commitments:

In the final round, everyone stated how they personally will contribute. These promises will now be integrated into development discussions, bringing the game’s insights directly into everyday work.

Feedback on the gamified approach was overwhelmingly positive:

The Culture Day got fantastic feedback. When we asked whether people wanted to continue playing with the Growth Culture game, 96% said yes!

Even the more skeptical participants were impressed:

This wasn’t a top-down initiative, it was different, and that’s why it worked so well.

The bespoke game deck was built around Vastuu Group’s existing values. By the end of the game sessions:

• the values had evolved into actions, gaining new, more active wording
• excellent complementary data in the form of a cultural SWOT was created
• customer-centricity was defined as the new focal point of further development 
• the insights and personal commitments recorded during the game are being integrated directly into development discussions – making culture not only visible, but actionable

Want to explore how Topaasia could support a similar journey in your organization?
Get in touch, and let’s start the dialogue!