“Having dedicated and motivated personnel is one of our most important goals. One of the ways we promote this is by building an open and appreciative corporate culture. Respect for other people must be reflected in all activities, by all Finavia employees,” says Kaarina Soikkanen, Senior Vice President of Administration and Personnel at Finavia.
Finavia aims to be a good workplace for everyone. Even now, the company is a good place to work, regardless of age or gender. It has started systematic development work to increase diversity.
“We treat everyone equally, pay equal wages, promote a healthy work/life balance and help older employees cope with the demands of work.”
Women are encouraged to take leadership and technical positions
Finavia prepares an equality and non-discrimination plan every other year in cooperation with personnel representatives. The issues to be monitored and the priorities of development work are selected at that time. One of the topics that are measured annually is the realisation of wage equity. In Finavia, the salary consists of a basic salary according to competence grade and a supplement according to personal performance.
“We compare how women and men are placed in different competence grades and whether there are differences between the sexes in basic salaries and personal supplements. We have made sure that we do not classify the typical “male tasks” as more demanding. According to our monitoring, wage equity is implemented well at Finavia.”
The proportion of women and men in different positions is monitored regularly. For a long time, Finavia has been a male-dominated work community, with women accounting for less than one third of its personnel.
“We have successfully increased the number of women in supervisory and executive positions, but in the maintenance unit, for example, the percentage of men continues to be high. The majority of those educated in many technical fields are men,” Soikkanen says.
Finavia also monitors how work and family life can be balanced.
“We aim to enable employees to work part-time if their family situation so requires. We also encourage men to take family leave.”
A culture that is open and appreciative of diversity
Finavia wants its employees to have the opportunity to be hired and rewarded and to progress in their work regardless of other characteristics, such as age and ethnicity.
“For several years, we have supported older Finavia employees to cope at work. Based on our monitoring, we hire people of all ages, including those over 50. The average age of our staff is a bit over 44 years.”
In multiculturalism, Finavia still has work to do. According to Soikkanen, one of the key reasons is the strict requirement for Finnish language proficiency.
“When guiding traffic on a walkie-talkie, for example, one's speech must be understood unambiguously for safety reasons. On the other hand, in customer service tasks multilingualism is necessary and a major asset.”
Systematic work has begun to increase multiculturalism.
“We train our supervisors to manage multicultural teams. The HR unit participates in the recruitment process and ensures that the applicants are treated equally. In the annual employee surveys, we ask about experiences of discrimination and inappropriate talk in the work community,” Soikkanen says.
