How can project professionals strengthen their change management skills in a highly technical environment? Valmet Automotive partnered with Taskmill to deliver tailored change management training that brought a stronger people-centred perspective into everyday project work.
Valmet Automotive is a multidisciplinary industrial company founded in Finland in 1968. The company operates as a contract manufacturing partner for the automotive, defence, and other high-technology industries. Industry changes are constant. Project professionals work with technical requirements, tight schedules, and complex delivery structures every day.
Supporting the organization through change is important, and the company has invested significantly in this area in recent years. Petri Nieminen, Lead Project Engineer responsible for procuring the training, describes the starting point:
“In a highly technical expert organization, attention naturally focuses on hard skills and technical expertise. The people perspective is not forgotten, but it receives less attention than it should, and this is reflected in how changes are implemented.”
Tailored Change Management Training for Project Professionals
Valmet Automotive selected Taskmill as its partner for the change management training program for project professionals delivered in spring 2026. A key reason was the practical experience of Taskmill’s trainers. All our trainers actively work with clients and bring insights from real-world projects into the training.
Taskmill’s Organisational Change Management (OCM) training was tailored to Valmet Automotive’s operating environment. It also addressed the specific challenges participants face in their daily work. The goal was to provide practical change management tools that participants could apply directly in their projects. The interactive training also accommodated different roles and learning styles.
Before the training, we held a planning workshop to select and refine relevant scenarios. The scenarios reflected situations participants could encounter in their daily work.
A People-Centred Approach to Change Management
A people-centred approach to change management was at the heart of the training. The day’s content was built around participants’ own experiences. These experiences served as a foundation for exploring new perspectives on how change affects people, what happens psychologically during change, and how individuals can strengthen their own sense of agency even in situations beyond their control.
“Change was examined from three perspectives: the individual, the team, and the organization. The facilitation approach encouraged everyone to first form their own view independently, then discuss it in small groups before bringing it into a shared discussion. These joint reflection sessions became a significant part of the learning process,” says Johanna Kettunen, Trainer and Organisational Coach.
A key part of the change management training was a scenario-based workshop where participants applied the tools and methods they had learned to realistic project situations. The groups diagnosed a change situation, assessed key risks, and developed an approach for implementing the change and supporting communication.
The day concluded with a Change Myth Busters quiz, a fast-paced team competition that playfully tested participants’ understanding of the concepts covered during the training.
Putting Change Management skills into Practice
Participants rated the training 4.55 out of 5. More importantly, they gained a stronger people-centred perspective on change.
This became particularly visible during the scenario exercise. Participants who had previously focused mainly on technology-driven change approached the exercise from a new perspective. Their thinking had already shifted during the training day.
Connecting the learning to participants’ own experiences proved highly effective. It helped bring the people side of change to the forefront.
One project manager leading a change initiative commented afterwards that they had never fully realized how strongly people’s emotions are connected to the success of change. This insight concretely changed their perspective on project work.
“A full-day training program delivered in this way achieves much more than simply reviewing theories at a high level. Especially when the trainer can bring such strong practical expertise into the room and facilitate open discussions around topics that can be challenging in Finnish working culture, such as emotions,” says Petri Nieminen, Lead Project Engineer, Valmet Automotive.