Responsibility and Freedom
At Innofactor, employees work at the office, at the customer’s premises, and remotely, depending on what is the most appropriate choice in each situation. Teams agree on their operating models and rules concerning their working methods. Choices are guided by customer requirements. Teams are recommended to choose in-office days – for example, one or two days per week – when the team works together in the same physical location, either at the office or at the customer’s premises. We have also made changes to our offices to support hybrid work even more effectively. For example, at our head office in Espoo, we opened several new team rooms that enable productive in-office work for teams. We also completed a new studio at our Espoo office in 2022 to enable high-quality virtual broadcasts and webinars.
Our operating models are based on a self-organizing culture, which means that teams are empowered to plan their work. At the same time, we want to support a strong sense of community and team spirit, which is why we encourage teams and units to have common in-office days.
In late 2022, we opened a new office in Oulu, moved our Kajaani and Jyväskylä offices to larger premises, and modernized our office in Stockholm. We also began expansion work on our office in Tampere in late 2022. We believe that physical offices play a role as important meeting places and hold the potential for attracting talent from various parts of the Nordic region.
In 2022, we recruited over 100 new professionals to work at Innofactor, many of whom are returnees, and we also welcomed nearly 50 new professionals to Innofactor as part of the Invenco acquisition.
One of the best things about 2022 was being able to get together with co-workers at various events. After a few years of COVID-19 restrictions, we again had the opportunity to invite all of our personnel in the Nordic region to our Espoo Campus for our annual InSpirit event, which included a seminar and an evening party. We also had pre-Christmas parties in all of the cities we operate in, and we were able to organize unit-specific gatherings. A strong sense of community and social events are a big part of Innofactor’s culture and the creation of team spirit.
Microsoft also selected Innofactor as the recipient of the Tech for Good Partner of the Year 2022 in Finland in recognition of our performance in realizing our purpose of innovating to make the world work better.
Talented Employees at the Core of Our Business
Innofactor aims to invest in competence development at the Nordic level. At the beginning of 2022, we adopted a new performance indicator to actively monitor the certifications of our specialists. Innofactor's strategic goal is to have the most competent Nordic teams. Certificates are a key aspect of demonstrating our competence. Innofactor employees completed over 100 new certifications in 2022.
We organized diverse trainings through Innofactor Academy in 2022. Innofactor Academy brings together Innofactor's training activities at the local level as well as the Nordic level. We organized training related to Microsoft technology, basic induction training, as well as ITIL, PRINCE2, and Scrum training. In our managerial training, coaching-style leadership was one of our key themes in 2022.
We want to focus on training young people and offering jobs to new graduates. We organized our fourth Innofactor DigiStar Trainee Program, the purpose of which is to provide a diverse induction training period for new professionals, followed by learning on the job. We hired 37 new graduates in the Nordic countries in 2022. Our DigiStar program was implemented at the Nordic level for the first time in 2022, with the intake doubling from the previous year. Our target for 2023 is to increase the number of DigiStar participants to over 60.
Our Nordic Approach and Modern Operating Models Support Our Work
Innofactor's goal is to build a company with Nordic integration. Common systems, processes, and culture support Innofactor's strategic targets and cooperation between countries. We want to build a genuinely Nordic culture. In 2022, we added a Nordic onboarding day to our induction training for recruits, allowing new employees to get to know each other and Innofactor's operations. This initiative was received with enthusiasm.
At the end of 2022, we started negotiating a company-specific collective agreement in Finland. With the company-specific collective agreement, we wanted to enable us to agree on issues that are important to our personnel and to have a simpler and more understandable collective agreement that reflects who we are as a company. The new benefits we introduced in the collective agreement include the possibility to participate in voluntary exercises of the Defence Forces without loss of earnings and equal treatment for the paid part of parental leave. Innofactor's company-specific collective agreement was approved and signed at the beginning of 2023.
We Invest in Good Leadership
We believe that every Innofactor employee has the right to good leadership. The continuous development of leadership is a high priority for us. In addition to the quarterly employee satisfaction survey, all managers participated in the annual comprehensive 360° evaluation. According to the results, the quality of leadership at Innofactor is higher than the European benchmark by a clear margin. We want to continue our strong development, build self-organization and a coaching-style leadership culture that supports and develops our specialists while making Innofactor an even better place to work in the future.
Smiling at Work is Allowed
At Innofactor, people work together and support each other. We want work to be both meaningful and fun. This is underpinned by good leadership and common working practices, but especially by great colleagues, customers, and a fantastic team spirit.
We organize recreational events for our personnel, both in teams and at the corporate level. In 2022, we focused particularly on in-person meetings between people. Having organized many virtual events during the COVID-19 pandemic, we decided it was time for our employees to get together with their co-workers in person. Our InSpirit summer event was held at the Espoo Campus, with over 400 Innofactor employees coming together to learn, get to know each other, and party. Several local events were also organized at our various operating locations. For example, we celebrated the opening of our Oulu office with employees and customers in attendance.
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