Iron Bank: an effortless path to personalised work equipment

The so-called Iron Bank is an employee benefit that allows Nitoreans to choose their work equipment freely within the starting budget of 7,200 euros. Each month, employees’ Iron Bank accounts receive 194 euros for future devices or maintenance needs. The system is fair and empowers everyone to be responsible for their own equipment, be it computers and smartphones or electric desks and ergonomic chairs.

Iron Bank also promotes sustainability and re-use of existing devices. Nitoreans are encouraged to ensure their Iron Bank holds enough budget before upgrading their gear. Maintenance and additional warranties are strongly recommended, and also paid from their balances – in case of emergencies, though, Nitoreans have access to loaner devices when needed.

Utilising a slightly used laptop could be a more budget and environmentally-friendly option, but on the other hand, Iron Bank also allows employees to choose more expensive computers that would stay relevant for longer. It’s the freedom that makes Iron Bank a loved benefit for many.

From Excel Sheets to a Web App – One-stop-shop to Rule Them All

In the early days, Nitor’s admins would track every company-owned piece of equipment through one single Excel file. When the Iron Bank saw the light of day in 2017, so did the personal Excel sheets designed to track the equipment of each individual. The hundreds of sheets held information, such as serial numbers and replacement dates, for every cable and piece of equipment. Needless to say, working with numerous Excel sheets was never meant to be the permanent solution.

In the spring of 2023, the first version of Iron Bank web app was released as a Nitor Core project. Nitoreans can view their Iron Bank balance, order new equipment, and manage the recycling of their old devices straight through one platform. Respectively, admins are able to see every piece of relevant information with ease.

Once a Nitorean has submitted their equipment order, the Business Operations Specialist still needs to do the actual purchasing by hand on each webstore. Iron Bank can parse information straight from Verkkokauppa.com, Nitor’s preferred partner for equipment, shopping basket link, decreasing the chance of errors. From a user perspective, the experience is nearly as seamless as it would when ordering directly from Verkkokauppa.com. For other service providers, Nitoreans simply input the order information manually.

And as Nitoreans are keen to utilise employee buyback of old work equipment, they can see the current value of each device at any given time. This also removes manual work from the payroll specialist, who used to calculate the salary deduction for every single item by hand.

Sustainability and Top-notch Employee Experience in the Heart of Design

The minimum baseline was to offer the same functionalities already existing on Iron Bank Excel sheets. Additionally, the design would emphasise improving the employee experience through better purchase and buyback processes as well as decrease the workload for admin users. Additionally, the Nitorean volunteer team develops new features to constantly improve the Iron Bank’s usability and insights it could offer on choosing devices, for example.

With smart design comes smart action, and that’s why the Iron Bank web app was designed to work well together with Verkkokauppa.com. Not only is the web store popular among employees, but from a company perspective, it’s good to have the vast majority of devices and their warranties come from one provider. While submitting information manually isn’t a hard task to do, the small friction encourages Nitoreans to choose Verkkokauppa.com.

Additionally, in the future, Nitoreans will gain more visibility on already existing devices. They already utilise used laptops, for example, more and more for their work, and improving the internal rotation of devices is a high priority for Iron Bank going forward. An employee moving forward can leave a relatively new laptop for someone else to use. Soon Nitoreans are able to see the used devices owned by Nitor that can be purchased to their Iron Banks, or loaned as secondary equipment during repairs and maintenance.

The development team consisted of volunteer designers and developers, who wanted to use their Core time to work with the app. While some would stay on the project longer, others would pop in and help with a feature or two when their schedule allowed. To enable this, the Iron Bank team has put a lot of emphasis on developer experience and effortless onboarding of the project. Working together to improve the everyday lives of Nitoreans perfectly sums up our core value of learning and doing things together as a community.

Based on user feedback, the Iron Bank app definitely hit the spot. Nitoreans find it easy to make their orders and admins have seen a massive decrease in workload. Of course, development will go on, and we are eager to see how the new features will improve the use of Iron Bank.

Interested to try our Iron Bank? Read more about us!