Case Study - Kommunal, Sweden's 2nd largest trade union

A previous Kommunal congress decision was to let the members have their say about Kommunal’s future welfare and political direction and to enable a more direct form of democracy.

The challenge for the leadership was how to reach all the members and listen to what each had to say in a meaningful way…

The solution was called the "Visa Vägen" or “The road of wisdom” ~ Developed with OPC.

The process was facilitated by almost 400 internal workshop hosts, who had been trained at five separate One-Day-Ready-to-Go® Workshop Host Training Programmes.

Together, the internal trainers took nearly 30,000 people through the Visa Vägen Workshop with up to 100 participants at each event. In total, the Visa Vägen material and message could cascade out to over 250,000 people because all workshop participants received material enabling them to run similar discussion groups on their return to work.

By the end of the project nearly two thirds of the Trade Union Membership had their say. The feedback from each event and team discussion was collected and summarised with a very simple and robust process, giving the leadership meaningful input. Because so many people had their own voice heard they felt involved. Because the Visa Vägen material enabled each of them to reflect and discuss the building blocks of the leadership’s thinking they built a greater understanding and a sense of shared ownership.

Lars-Åke Almqvist, Second Chairman of Kommunal said in an interview afterwards:

“This project was designed to facilitate and guide a values-oriented discussion right across our 600,000 membership, in order to provide Kommunal´s next national congress with a prioritised input into the future strategic plans of the organisation. We had our highest level of attendance at that next conference and the biggest “yes” vote ever for policies put forward by the leadership in response to the feedback from Visa Vägen.”