Metsä for all – advancing with equality

Five years ago, DEI – short for diversity, equality and inclusion – became a more common topic in companies. “Big employers, especially those with a global dimension, clearly turned their attention to it,” says Suvi Halttula from consultancy company Impaktly. She works with social responsibility, supporting companies in questions concerning DEI and human rights.

According to Halttula, the strong role that DEI plays in company agendas is boosted by new generations entering working life, investors and current employees who began considering their workplace commitment during the pandemic.

“Societies and labour markets are also in transition, and we are moving towards multiculturalism and multilingualism. Questions related to this are also discussed in a new way in workplace communities.”

Retirements will also bring about major changes in traditional industries.

Starting from the company level

Metsä Group’s DEI journey can be said to have started with the 2019 revision of the Code of Conduct. It gave a new boost to discussions about equality.

“As a company, we understand we need DEI activities so that we can be an even better workplace for our current personnel and continue to be an attractive employer in the evolving working life. We want to show direction in diversity and inclusion and in the promotion of gender equality and equal opportunities,” says Pertti Hietaniemi, Metsä Group’s SVP, Human Resources.

In day-to-day activities, equality can be as simple as making sure that participants in innovation and development projects are not always the same. This offers the opportunity for competence development to as many employees as possible. An equal distribution of overtime in shift work is another example of equal practice.

Halttula points out that diverse workplace communities that also pay attention to equality and inclusion often have more efficient and innovative teams. “Research indicates that DEI has a positive impact on the operating profit of companies promoting these themes.”

Metsä Group conducts regular checks to eliminate any unjustified gender pay differences. The company’s target is to increase the share of women in management to at least 30 per cent by 2030.

“Following the adoption of anonymous recruiting, the share of women in our recruitments has started to increase,” Hietaniemi says.

It has been the company’s primary recruiting method since the autumn of 2022.

Involving the entire workplace community

Metsä Group operates in around 30 countries and has 9,500 employees. DEI is also about involving and engaging the entire workplace community in a cultural change.

In 2021, the company introduced the Metsä for all vision, which outlines the kind of workplace that Metsä Group wants to be and the kind of commitment that is expected from everyone.
“The most important thing that everyone can start with is examining and challenging their unconscious biases. Our e-learning course for the entire personnel is a basic package related to the theme, but awareness needs to be increased in many other ways as well. For example, DEI is part of all our manager and leadership training programmes,” says Ella Vallenius, Metsä Group’s HR Development Manager.

To ensure that the changes filter into day-to-day activities on all its sites, Metsä Group has organised more than 40 DEI workshops for management teams worldwide. The participants review the results of local workplace survey, discuss challenges and seek solutions to them. After the workshops, the solutions are implemented with the entire workplace community.

Halttula, who has organised the workshops, sums up: “The workshops offer the opportunity to consider the specific meaning of DEI to us. This is a unique concept that places Metsä Group among the forerunners.’’