Our people

Employee engagement

Increasing employee engagement was one of our key people-related targets in our Sustainability Agenda for 2020-2025. We conducted a global employee engagement survey for a fifth consecutive year in 2024. The response rate for the survey remained at a strong level and was 79%. 

The survey results identified both positive areas and opportunities for improvement. In the 2024 survey, we saw improvement in many of the survey areas. The most significant improvement appeared in service and quality focus as well as innovation. Feedback and recognition have been identified as an area for further development in the previous surveys, and the recent results confirm us that we have taken effective steps in the right direction as the results improved slightly. On the other hand, employees’ confidence in the company’s future success decreased slightly from 2023. 

 The survey results are used as a basis for our people-related development work. Team-specific results are shared with the team leaders, who will then review and discuss them within their teams. Based on the results, on top of Group level action plan, each site and function leader will create a targeted, actionable development plan for their respective organizations and will follow up on the progress. In 2024 we piloted a pulse survey in one of our production sites related to competence development and this was used as a baseline to decide further development. 

Based on the global results, our employee engagement index is 67%, which is one percentage point higher than in the previous survey. In our sustainability agenda 2020–2025 our target is that our engagement index will be 73% by 2025. The index is a combination of questions concerning our people’s likelihood of recommending and staying in the company, organizational pride, and commitment. The result means that 67% of the survey participants responded favorably to those questions. 

In pursuit of high performance

Building a high performance culture is an important element in Suominen’s strategy and Sustainability Agenda. We strive to build a culture in which people are encouraged to exceed expectations – to go the extra mile – and are enabled to perform to their full potential. To support the successful implementation of our strategy, we ensure that our employees’ targets and actions are aligned with the company’s strategy and objectives.

We strive to develop our processes and practices to identify, foster and reward excellent performance and to drive a pay-for-performance compensation model. Further developing our recruitment and onboarding processes is an important long-term target for us. In addition, we aim to strengthen and promote our employer brand actively to increase employee commitment, retention, satisfaction, and attraction. 

Promoting equal opportunities and supporting professional development

Suominen’s way of working is to promote human rights and equal opportunities for all employees. In our sustainability agenda 2025–2030, we are pursuing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) index of 80% by 2030. We aim to develop our DEI index by improving open and honest two-way communication and making sure employees are rewarded equally and fairly. We are building a culture of diversity, where ideas and opinions can be shared without the fear of negative consequences. While setting the target, our own employees were invited to participate in a survey where the current status of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) was mapped. 

Career development and identifying and developing the competencies that are essential in reaching our strategic objectives have been identified as areas for improvement in our previous global employee engagement surveys.  

In 2024, we continued to execute Suominen’s competency framework to systematically support our employees in their professional development. The framework also strengthens our processes for recruitment and succession planning and enables the mapping of competencies. We offered trainings in high-quality development and career aspiration discussions to all our white-collar employees. In addition, we enhanced our competence and leadership capabilities by increasing human resources to individual and organizational development.  

We continued to support the development of our personnel with various development and training programs that the manager and the employee have identified together in their performance development discussions. Trainings during the year included management trainings and various quality, safety and process trainings for targeted roles. In 2024 we launched a compulsory training path for all white-collar managers, which includes topics such as psychological safety, giving and receiving feedback and coaching essentials. The completion of the training path will be followed up during 2025. Additionally, we launched onboarding paths for all white-collar employees and white-collar managers and a supporting eLearning for managers to organize a proper onboarding for new employees.