We care about people
We take social responsibility by looking after our employees, customers and local residents. Our focus is on continuously improving safety at work and promoting the wellbeing of our staff and others in the region. We want to ensure our employees have an open and inspiring working environment in which they can thrive.
Working for equality
Being open and treating everyone equally is important to us in everything we do. We do not tolerate discrimination in any form, and we promote fairness in all our activities. Our aim is to develop ways to promote equality in our work.
At the moment there is a major gender imbalance at Oulun Energia 79 per cent of our employees are men. Women make up a third of the management team, and just over a third of the board members are women. We are exploring the possibility of undertaking systemic reforms to break away from the traditional, two-gender perspective.
We want to play our part in breaking down the barriers between professions and in developing ways to attract jobseekers of different genders. Oulun Energia’s job application processes and hiring policies are gender-neutral. We endeavour to ensure that new job titles are not gendered in any of the languages we use. For instance, rather than using the masculine Finnish-language term esimies to refer to managers or supervisors, we use the gender-neutral esihenkilö. Oulun Energia has drawn up an equality and equal opportunities plan, and as part of putting it implementing it we have carried out survey to examine gender quality in pay. We will also be conducting an equality and equal opportunities survey for all our staff.
Diversity enriches the work community and the way we work. Although the Oulun Energia work community is fairly homogeneous in terms of genders, languages and educational backgrounds, we are looking for new ways to increase diversity.
In our recruitment processes, we will pay careful attention to recruiting people with skills that we do not yet have. At the moment we mainly carry out recruitment in Finnish, as a good command of the language is essential for many of the positions at the company. However, we are open to considering recruitment in other languages on a case-by-case basis.
Prosperity for the region
In addition to our staff, Oulun Energia also considers it highly important to invest in wellbeing in the Oulu region as a whole. We are involved in organising various cultural and leisure events, and we hold free sports days for people in the area every year. We also support local sports and cultural activities. Read more about our sponsorship partnerships here.
Aiming for zero accidents
Our aim is to ensure that every single day at work is safe for our employees, with zero accidents.
Our main measure of safety is the total recordable incident rate (TRIR), which is the ratio of all accidents requiring medical treatment to one million working hours. The number of accidents suffered by Oulun Energia employees dropped by half from the previous measurement period in 2022, with the TRIR falling from 4.2 to 2.2.
Safety is more than just avoiding accidents
However, safety is not just about avoiding accidents. Ensuring safety over the long term requires sustained long-term proactive work every day. To this end, Oulun Energia has introduced a safety programme, called Turvallisuus100, the success of which is measured by an occupational safety index.
In the index, we monitor the number of days of safe working, the number of points and time taken to process safety observations made by employees, the completion of accident and incident investigations within the target time, the number of safety rounds, and how measures to improve safety have been implemented. In 2022, our occupational safety index was at a record high of 99,3 %. Our target is 100%.
Read more about safety in Oulun Energia
Focus on staff wellbeing
Oulun Energia’s goal is to be the most energetic workplace in Finland – to guarantee our employees an open and inspiring working environment that contributes to their wellbeing, helping everyone to succeed and learn.
Starting in 2021, Oulun Energia monitors the employee experience through Pulssi surveys conducted three times a year. According to responses to the 2022 Pulse survey, many staff consider the work community and their colleagues to be important to wellbeing. In addition, most employees felt that their own work goals are very clear, and that they have a good amount of control over how they do their work. On the other hand, many respondents noted that there is room for improvement at Oulun Energia when it comes to work organisation and resource planning. Work culture and supervisory practices also need further development, many felt.
More than half of Oulun Energia’s staff work in jobs that are at least partly suitable for remote working. Identifying signs of a decline in working capacity or wellbeing when working remotely can be difficult, which is why Oulun Energia is working to find ways to do this.
All group employees have access to occupational healthcare, an occupational physiotherapist and an annual benefit that can be used for wellness activities such as massages, dental care, sports, and cultural activities.
