Our people - our culture
"We support and follow women’s development into holding leadership roles in a systematic manner. Our approach includes mentoring programmes and companywide target setting. Another important thing we strive for is the well-being of our professionals –we do our best to support both physical and mental well-being, as well as a sense of purpose."
– Helena Telaranta, HR and Talent Partner
We are in the people business, and the well-being of our professionals is our top priority. It is visible in our shared values, ethical and leadership principles, our ways of working and the ways we support the well-being and sense of purpose of our professionals.
Currently, we have over 800 Deloitte professionals in three locations: Helsinki, Tampere and Turku. We are also looking forward to opening our new office in 2024, We Land, in Ruoholahti, Helsinki, and have recently moved into new offices spaces in Turku and Tampere. The We Land project aims at combining business and the individual needs of hybrid work by gathering Deloitte people, as well as our clients, in one place, supporting our well-being in a modern, flexible and stylish working environment.
Good leadership creates a solid foundation for our culture
Good leadership and creating prosperity are part of a well-functioning working environment. We train our leaders on all levels on coaching skills on a regular basis via different forums, info sessions and learning programmes. Our employee engagement rate has steadily improved over the years. During FY23 the overall results improved by +1, overall satisfaction and motivation being 71/100, which is also on a par with our Nordic benchmarks. Our employee turnover rate is at the targeted level, being approximately 16% YTD. We measure our leadership quality by asking for upward feedback from our professionals for our leaders. Our national score in the latest survey was 4.2 on a range of 1–5. The score has increased by +0.1 from FY22, being on par with Deloitte Nordics’ average. The average score for female and male leaders is exactly the same as FY2022 (4.2), with a slight improvement for males compared with FY22 (females: 4.2; males: 4.0). Based on the feedback, on a company level, our strength is inclusive leadership, whereas we can still improve our career coaching and inspiring leadership.
Hybrid work
Hybrid work has become the new normal for our teams in Finland. Our professionals have great freedom to choose how to deliver their work successfully. When choosing the best way of working, we try to match the wishes and needs of our clients and our professionals. In practice this means partly working at the Deloitte office or a client site and partly working remotely. We aim to meet our colleagues in person on a weekly basis in different forms of collaboration: in-person, hybrid and virtual collaborations.
The following principles guide the choices we make:
- Be client focused – co-locate with our clients as determined by their co-location preferences while factoring in the requirements of our work, quality and the needs of our people
- Be people centric – prioritise moments that matter and understand our people’s expectations for their growth, development and talent experience
- Be powered by inclusion – flexibility and trust are central to an environment where everyone can be successful Be driven to achieve climate goals – fully embrace hybrid work as this will reduce the carbon emissions that result from travelling and commuting
Rewarding and recognition
We follow an equal pay strategy. We have also implemented new initiatives in rewarding wherein we have started our own employee fund (which is an optional way to pay and receive bonuses), as well as updated our quick rewards catalogue for recognition of our talents. The equal pay strategy also applies to gender equality. A third party conducts annual salary surveys to ensure a gender-equal pay strategy, and no significant deviations were found. Compensation guidelines are reviewed annually based on market conditions and salary surveys.
Diversity, equality and inclusion
At Deloitte, people are valued and respected for who they are and are trusted to add value for their clients, teams and communities in a way that reflects their unique qualities. Treating professionals equally and respecting diversity are integral parts of what a good work culture means at Deloitte.
Everyone in our work community has the responsibility to act and behave in a way that promotes respect, diversity and well-being at work and allows us to attain our ambitions. As a company, we recognise and affirm differences in age, education, ethnicity, race, family status, gender, national origin, physical ability or qualities, religion, sexual orientation, thought processes, personalities and lifestyles and any other characteristics that make a person an individual. Unequal treatment based on any of the above qualities is not tolerated.
Diversity, equity and inclusion focus areas in Finland
Deloitte’s Global’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) strategy – ALL IN – emphasises a workplace culture that is founded on respect and is characterised by inclusive behaviour and an appreciation for diversity in its many forms. Locally, we have chosen the following three main focus areas:
- Gender diversity: We want to lead the way in gender diversity, ensuring that women occupy a proportionate number of leadership roles.
- Equality and family-friendliness: We have an inclusive view of family – everyone at Deloitte has a family and all family situations should be considered and treated equally. A family consists of who you feel belongs in it.
- A culture of well-being: We want to develop a culture of well-being based on flexibility, choice and support. In addition to these focus areas, we are also building cultural diversity, supporting mental health and well-being, fostering LGBT+ inclusion and offering inclusive leadership training.
Gender balance
Deloitte strives to make having a gender balance the norm across our organisation. We have set aspirational goals against which we monitor our progress. These goals are reflected through the entire career lifecycle, ranging from recruitment, promotion and succession processes onto development, mentoring, sponsorship and flexible working.
At Deloitte Finland, there is an equal number of women at junior levels and at manager level. There has been a positive development at senior manager level as almost 50% of senior management positions are filled by women.
Our goal is for at least 30% of our partners to be female and for 40% of our leadership roles (e.g. partners, directors or leaders in business/client/industry roles) to be held by women by 2025. We have had positive development in the number of female partners as we now have reached our goal of 30% of the roles being filled by women. However, we still need to focus on advancing the number of females in other leadership roles.
A concrete example of supporting the gender balance is The Wave sponsorship programme, which supports women’s development into holding leadership roles. In Finland the programme has been going on since FY2020 and each time a new round has started, we have been able to expand the number of participants in order to make a bigger impact. The idea of the programme is to support women in attaining leadership roles, and our leaders will personally commit to acting as their sponsors.
Family-friendliness
Creating a family-friendly working environment supports our gender diversity goals, as well as the well-being of our people. Family-friendliness covers all different phases of life, including (but not limited to) being in a family with children. Family-friendliness is about empathy and understanding but also about practical measures like flexibility and the balance between work and one’s private life during the different life stages. A family-friendly culture is beneficial for both the professionals and the company – it increases well-being, work motivation, satisfaction and commitment.
Some concrete examples of our family-friendliness include:
- The Family Leave Mentoring programme: The programme aims to provide positive role models for parents and enables new parents to have extra, continued support in their transition back to working life after becoming a parent. The programme assists in finding one’s career path and offers practical tips for combining working and private life.
- Supporting all parents equally by offering three months paid leave for all parents: Enabling a balance in all life situations and supporting an equal share of family leave for all parents promotes equality in working life. There is no required length of employment prior to being eligible for paid parental leave.
Health and well-being
Deloitte provides the talent experience you would expect from the undisputed leader in professional services. This involves a holistic approach to the well-being of our people, allowing them to be at their best on both a personal and professional level. The holistic approach means that well-being is supported by an engaged mind, energised body and a sense of purpose.
For having an engaged mind, we foster an environment where everyone can be themselves and we respect the individual choices people make. For having an energised body, we provide hobby clubs and other support for physical well-being. We also support our professionals in finding a sense of purpose by leading with our values, offering coaching and meaningful discussions, building on strengths and fostering a culture where the well-being of our people is a priority.
Our strategy is preventative, and we work very closely with our occupational healthcare service provider, Aava. We offer our professionals extended occupational healthcare services that provide extensive support for the prevention and treatment of illnesses.
Deloitte is the main partner of the Finnish Olympic Committee
Deloitte and the Finnish Olympic Committee entered a partnership in the last quarter of the fiscal year. The co-operation utilises Deloitte’s extensive consulting expertise. Our aim is to help the Olympic Committee implement its future strategy and support their vision of building a better world through sport. The aim of the cooperation is to strengthen, enhance and create a long-term and positive impact on Finnish society through the Olympic movement and promoting an active lifestyle.
At the core of the cooperation is a shared vision of the purpose of our operations. The Olympic Committee wants to create a better world through exercise. The guiding principle of Deloitte is to create better futures. We believe that it is possible to be better and that the best impact comes when everyone (individuals, communities or society) can reach their full potential.
Deloitte’s cooperation is mainly focusing on supporting the Olympic in encouraging Finns to exercise more. Everyone should have equal opportunities to feel well. An active lifestyle improves the quality of life and health, supports learning and work ability. The actual exercise programme is expected to go live next fiscal year. With our extensive consulting expertise, we enable and support the building of an ecosystem that enables and encourages Finnish mobility.
The starting point for the cooperation is the belief that creating opportunities for individuals to reach their full potential genuinely improves society as a whole. Together, we want to create a better future through exercise, shared goals and transformation. We believe that through this cooperation, it is possible to be better.
A focus on mental well-being
2023 we have placed a special focus on mental well-being. Mental well-being has and will be clearly visible throughout the year in our internal events, campaigns and communication. Our key values Take care of each other and Foster inclusion are the building blocks for creating a work environment that supports mental well-being. We focus on prevention and providing support when there are challenges.
‘Auntie’ is our newest addition to our well-being benefits. Auntie is a preventative mental well-being service with confidential one-to-one sessions with a qualified mental health professional and a wide range of self-guided exercises and l.
Taking care of our mental health is a part of a sustainable work life and sustainable well-being. In supporting our people’s mental health, we focus on prevention, building our people’s resilience and providing support when they are facing mental health challenges.
Societal impact – building better futures
Millions of people around the world are held back from achieving their full potential. Investing in education and skills is our approach to supporting the next generation when creating better futures for all.
Our future innovators, entrepreneurs and leaders will need new skills to help us meet the challenges of tomorrow. We are investing in innovative approaches to supporting education, digital skills development and training opportunities so that everyone can succeed in the modern economy.
Deloitte’s global societal impact WorldClass initiative aims to impact on 100 million futures through education, skills development and access to opportunity, thus empowering people to succeed in a rapidly changing global economy. In Finland we want to make efforts to help people to develop job skills, improve educational outcomes and access opportunities to succeed. We invest time into our people, provide volunteering opportunities and donate to support the students, teachers and education leaders.
Our goal is to create a positive impact through education, skills development and ensuring access to opportunities so no one is left behind in the new normal. We have several initiatives in Finland that support our WorldClass social impact goals. We have already impacted on 44 372 individuals since 2018 in Finland alone. This year, we reached 4 552 people through our WorldClass programmes; in total, we have already achieved more than two thirds of our initial target of impacting on 60 000 futures in Finland by 2030.
One of our key focus areas is the partnership with the Children and Youth Foundation and selected other charity organisations with whom we are targeting supporting Generation Z to reach their full potential. Our programmes have a focus on themes related to the future of work, such as digital learning, developing critical skills for future workers and investing in educators.
- Deloitte, together with the Children and Youth Foundation and other corporations, has been involved in developing a new nationwide platform: TET.fi. This platform is designed to help young secondary school students to discover work placements that align with their interests and provide them with the opportunity to gain insight into the world of work. TET.fi empowers youth to identify and secure a work placement aligned with their ambitions while offering companies an inclusive channel through which to provide valuable work opportunities and access emerging talent. In addition, a group of young students have attended a TET work placement campus week in our Helsinki office when they had an opportunity to experience working life and learnt to confront tomorrow’s security challenges and skills-based work assignments. Our voluntary Impact Day this year was organised around TET.fi and Futures School themes that support our societal impact.
- The Read Hour campaign is a nationwide campaign that challenges everybody to read for one hour on 8th September and thus contributes to increased literacy and sustainable development. Deloitte participated the campaign by raising awareness of the importance of reading with social media campaigns in which our practitioners shared their tips for interesting books that had an impact on their learning path.
- The Futures School teaches futures literacy to children in comprehensive schools and provides teachers and education leaders with tools for integrating future themes into their everyday work. The Futures School annually reaches hundreds of professionals and thousands of children and youth all over Finland by training programmes and workshops, coaching activities and innovative projects with schools and municipalities. The Futures School is currently developing a digital learning concept in order to scale and integrate futures literacy into the Finnish curriculum. During this year, the Futures School organised a one-month online training course for secondary and upper secondary school teachers on futures literacy and the future of work. Deloitte professional provided support and voluntary expertise, engaging in discussions on megatrends and the impact on the future of work.
An internal societal impact story
Impact Day activities have been part of Deloitte’s culture since 2000. The day provides an opportunity for our Deloitte professionals to support our local non-profit initiative, utilising their skills for the benefit of youth.
This year, Impact Day supported our WorldClass social impact initiative and our ALL IN (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) initiative by empowering children and youth with diverse abilities with which they can strengthen their faith in the future and to learn meaningful pathways for the future of work.
Impact Day 2023 was held in late May in collaboration with the Children and Youth Foundation and the theme of the day was ‘The future of work’. A group of young people and their teachers were invited to participate in the day: approximately 50 secondary school students took part in discussions at Deloitte's office in Helsinki, and over 200 youth joined the day remotely. More than 50 Deloittees volunteered for logistical help, hosting the workshop and fair stands and organising activities in which the youth could explore the identified essential skills of future work.
The Children and Youth Foundation aims to strengthen belief in the future and support the agency of children and young people. The future of work, related perceptions, hopes and fears are, in many ways, at the core of the Children and Youth Foundation’s work: the aim is to give young people the opportunity to influence the future – including the future of work. The best ways to achieve this goal is by bringing together professionals and young people, engaging in discussions and listening to young people’s perspectives, which is especially important. Deloitte’s Impact Day made this possible: the expertise of Deloitte’s professionals, combined with the viewpoints of young people, opened up new perspectives on the future of work.
On Impact Day, content for the TET.fi service was collaboratively created which will be accessed by 125 000 young people annually in the future.
Heidi Harju, Programme Manager at the Children and Youth Foundation, stated ‘I’m sure everyone had a great day! It was a pleasure to see how young people were able to develop their ideas about important workplace skills, now and in the future, with the help of Deloitte’s professionals, and I believe the discussions were enriching for all the participants. It is truly valuable that Deloitte, with its extensive expertise, is working together with young people to shape the future of the workforce.’
‘It was great to be able to share my work experiences with the youth and to have an impact on their opportunities to learn work skills for today and the future. We presented our research on the future of work to the young participants, focusing on work skills. The youth were able to discuss the future’s work skills with each other and reflect on them in relation to their own experiences and preferences. It was rewarding for me to hear what the youth thought about work as it is important for us to understand the views of new generations about work. I think it’s great that Deloitte takes responsibility for social matters through collaboration activities like this. Many of our professionals participated in these activities with enthusiasm, which was great to see. I encourage everyone to share their work experiences with youth to improve the working life experience of everyone; I remember being very curious about working life myself before entering it when I was young.’
- Samu Eskola, Senior Consultant, Deloitte’s Human Capital practice