Tietoevry has been working strategically to advance diversity – and gender balance for many years. Read more about how Tietoevry works towards more equality and diversity within the company.
How does a company like Tietoevry work towards more equality and diversity within the company?
Tietoevry has been working strategically to advance diversity – and gender balance, for many years. It is a business imperative for us to develop new digital services for diverse users. Naturally, we will be more successful if we have a diverse team developing those services. Also, there has been a shortage of competencies in key areas for many years already – we need to utilize our markets’ full potential to fill that gap. Furthermore, when competing for the best talent, the company culture plays a key role. At Tietoevry, our culture is built on our Nordic values of openness, trust, and diversity – and we see that as an advantage for us in this industry with global competition.
We have also publicly stated that we aim to achieve a 50/50 gender balance by 2030. This ambition is part of our sustainability strategy and ambitions, and we will report on the progress and activities taken regularly. Several initiatives are already ongoing in Tietoevry to reach our 50/50 gender balance goal.
These include:
- Setting measurable and transparent goals for gender balance per business area
- Leadership promotions: Ensure to identify successors of both females and males
- Recruitment practices: Ensuring both female and male candidates when possible
- Tackling the unconscious bias, e.g. by expanding the implementation of an anonymous gamified recruitment process
- Increasing development and mentoring initiatives for female leaders
- Conducting awareness building initiatives across the organization, including unconscious bias training
- Build and highlight our female role models to influence girls and women to choose an education within Tech. Tietoevry also collaborates with Women in Tech.
In addition, we have taken steps to more inclusive and gender-neutral job ads, and we share these learnings for global use. Furthermore, a salary comparison exercise in different employee categories and geographies has been initiated. This is not where we stop. We will plan other activities as we move forward with our journey.
How will you contribute to launching the SHE Index in Finland?
We have joined the SHE Community to be together with like-minded companies and learn through benchmarking from the best. We have now participated in the SHE Index across Norway, Sweden, and Finland and continue to use the Index as an essential tool for developing inclusion and diversity within Tietoevry globally.
In Norway, Tietoevry has been part of the SHE Index for several years, and the company ranks at number 14 in 2021. In Sweden, Tietoevry was among the top 3 in its first year joining (2021), scoring high in areas such as the proportion of women in management positions. In Finland, Tietoevry has replied for the first time and is also among the first companies to apply it in the Finnish market. We are eager to see the results from all three countries, but we also hope to see many more companies in Finland using the SHE Index ahead.
Tietoevry is one of the leading Nordic partners of SHE Conference 2022, which will take place for the first time in Helsinki on 30th March 2022. We believe that a conference like this serves as a huge professional arena for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion discussions. We look forward to engaging our customers to join this event and participate in discussions on future working life. We look forward to doing our part in introducing the SHE Index in Finland and participating in the conference – by setting an example – and by openly communicating the successes and the challenges on our way towards a more equal and inclusive workplace. We are also partnering with SHE Conference in Stockholm and Oslo in 2022.
Why do you believe that the SHE Index is a valuable tool in working towards increasing equality and diversity?
Diversity is crucial for us in Tietoevry in many ways. For example, gender-balanced workforces are more likely to have varied perspectives and approaches, resulting in better decisions, increased innovation, and happier customers and the organization’s success. Gender diversity is also correlated with both profitability and value creation.
We think that the SHE Index provides a good set of indicators to strengthen transparency in many areas, such as stakeholders’ focus on diversity and inclusion in leadership and workforce, equal compensation, and work-life balance. We plan to utilize it and the learnings globally as we move forward.
SHE Index report 2022 click here to read more!
What is the current situation in Finland concerning equality and diversity?
Tietoevry is a global company with an HQ in Finland. We have the same equality and diversity goals globally; in Finland, a lot of good work is done on the equality and diversity front. The Global Gender Gap Report 2018 ranks Finland as 4th in the world. Women and men are equally represented in the Finnish labour market, e.g. due to public child care and measures to support women’s participation in the working life, such as a policy aiming to distribute family leaves more evenly between parents. Discrimination regarding gender is prohibited by law in Finland. The level of education of women is nowadays even higher than men: 58% of university graduates in 2017 were female.
However, there is still lots to be achieved. Areas for improvement include, e.g. the gender pay gap and the lack of women in top corporate positions – leadership teams and boards. Only around 20% of the workforce in tech industries are women. So we need to create interest in the tech sector and encourage girls at earlier stages of their education to consider this as an alternative for the future. This we do by being active in various networks and ensuring our role models are visible and actively working for this ambition.
Ambitions for the future?
As women are under-represented in the ICT industry, our gender-balance goal can be considered bold, even if other companies in our field have raised similar initiatives. But we believe the direction is more important than being perfect. The targets show our strong commitment to improving Tietoevry’s equality and diversity over time. We begin this journey aiming high and believing we can make a difference as one of the largest tech employers in the Nordics. Equality and diversity are core values for us, and we need to treat them like that every day in our every action.
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