We will show that better is possible.
- Lari Hintsanen, CEO and Partner
Welcome to our 2023 Impact Report. Last year, again, the world and our society experienced challenges, change and uncertainty. Our fiscal year, FY23, will be remembered as the year when we were all faced with war in Ukraine and all the related economic uncertainties – inflation, rising interest rates and an energy crisis – on top of the human tragedy that continues when writing this. Further, climate change and Covid accelerated new ways of working that have not gone anywhere, and this is not to mention the rapid advancements in technology and generative artificial intelligence (AI) – these are the new normal. We all need to constantly navigate through the complex changes and challenges of our time. In Finland, all this turmoil started to show towards the end of our fiscal year as the economy took a slower pace. Amid this, I am proud of how we continued to support our people and our communities as we have continued to serve our clients with distinction.
Our people
To be successful in our aspiration to be the leading and most impactful transformative service provider in the Finnish market, we must prioritise our people and our clients. The talent themes we had in FY23 were, for example, leadership development, diversity, equity, and inclusion, well-being, and rewards and recognition. To this end, we have several strategic initiatives to support these topics within the firm. The speedometers and compasses we are using to tell us where we are heading and at what pace all tell us that the direction we are heading in is good. Our key talent surveys (the People Survey and Upwards Feedback) both showed small increases in regard to a better FY23 while the indications of our talent brand’s interest in the market moved significantly forward: we were the number 1 choice of employer for Aalto University students and, in the whole calendar year of 23, the applications to our trainee positions increased by more than 50%.
On diversity and inclusion, our gender split is even when we look at the whole of Deloitte Finland at all career levels, and we have professionals from over 30 nationalities. But when we look at our top leadership and partners, we need to do more. We have not yet reached a balance (a 40–60% split) in this respect. Given that there are a number of root causes for this, we are addressing these causes with a number of dedicated actions (family-friendliness, a programme to support women on their way towards becoming senior leaders, key performance indicators [KPIs] for having a gender balance in key commercial roles within the firm etc.).
But we do not stop there. We aim to invest in our people holistically. Here are just some examples from the past fiscal year:
- We improved our working environment by having all our 3 offices renewed within a few years
- Ensuring lifelong learning by returning to pre-Covid levels in terms of technical skills and leadership training investments
- Introducing more attractive remuneration through personnel funds and ensuring that our salaries are in par with the market movement
- We provided activities related to physical well-being and a preventative mental well-being service
Our society
We take our role in serving the public interest extremely seriously while also shaping the future of the audit profession and continuing to invest in our business to ensure we perform to the highest standards. Our aspirations include the vision of being connected to leading Finland to achieve its full potential.
We want to lead the way and deliver on our responsibility to provide transparency to the capital markets and other stakeholders. We are deeply committed to audit quality, independence, ethics and integrity in all that we do. For us, this means that we need to step up yet again and lead the way in order to secure that we can operate in the new normal and build trust, regardless of how connected and complex the world might be. Trust is one of our main products on the market.
As a global leader we must meet the associated expectations through our work every day: working with our clients in embedding digital features into every aspect of their operations, readying businesses to protect themselves against cyber threats and other potential discontinuities and helping to execute transformative transactions. Most importantly, underpinned by our commitment to making an impact that matters, we deliver solutions for society’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) journey. We also take pride in shaping a better future through active dialogue with regulators (e.g. auditing and taxation regulators).
To meet our own and the public’s expectations, we want to give back, including giving back through sponsorship. Our collaboration with the Finnish Olympic Committee is focusing on making Finns exercise more as a nation. An active lifestyle improves the quality of life and health, and it supports learning and work ability. This systematic change has an impact that truly matters. The costs of people moving less are counted in billions of euros yearly, not to mention the impact this has on individuals. We also work with the Children and Youth Foundation.
Our clients
On top of addressing shorter-term economic realities, our clients are also addressing large fundamental discontinuities that reframe our perspectives. We see the following areas to be central to the related discussion in the upcoming years: technology, stakeholder pressure, a new ecosystem emerging and the government’s increasing role in local and regional economies and in driving regulation. All of these and beyond pushing our clients, and the whole of Finnish economy, to transform more fundamentally and faster.
Our purpose-driven aspiration to be the leading and most impactful transformative service provider in Finland has proven to be even more valid than we could have anticipated when formulating it a few years back. In FY23, we succeeded in a number of our strategic must-win areas, which are centred around the topics below:
Growth: With our top line growing by 25% and this growth primarily comes from our strategic industries. We have also invested in talent growth – for the first time ever, we have reached having 800 people working for us.
Transformation: With us both succeeding in our journey to transform the business we are in and the way we do business by having made considerable progress in alternative delivery models.
Going forward, we will increase the pace at which we are transforming ourselves in order to address the significant changes that our clients and the marketplace will witness over the years.
Thinking of all the changes and challenges we are facing as a society, it is clear that no one should just stand on the sidelines and watch – especially not the largest global professional service provider. We have the obligation to be part of the public dialogue about several topics that will frame the nation in the future because we both can and want to make an impact that matters. We need to play our part as a firm in regard to issues such as: the energy transition (via transformative advances in technology), reforming Finnish healthcare, increasing our security (covering topics ranging from NATO to cyber readiness) and making the needed tax reforms to ensure Finns exercise enough in order to stay as resilient as the people of this country have always proved to be. We need to do this because we can help Finland reach its full potential.
Lari Hintsanen
CEO and Partner
