Diversity & Inclusion Services: everything you need to know!

5 FAQs by Finnish decision-makers on Diversity & Inclusion services

We’ve already read it and heard it everywhere: the fact that for Finnish companies internationalization is a must in order to survive and thrive is old news. For this reason, campaigns have been developed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment of Finland in order to make Finland an internationally attractive place to work, study, carry out research, and invest.

As a matter of fact, as we see the working population is aging (in Finland faster than elsewhere), it is clear that companies will soon need to hire talent from abroad. However, all these combined efforts might lead nowhere if businesses don’t commit to a change in their company culture. So the question is: how can you attract but especially include and retain international talent? The answer is quite simple: by boosting your Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) strategy!

But how does your company actually benefit from Diversity & Inclusion services?

Well, the perks are definitely worth a try: increasing the innovation and productivity levels, solving the Nordics’ crucial issues of aging working population and skill gap, and opening up to potential export growth are only a few reasons why implementing Diversity & Inclusion in your company makes definitely sense (keep reading for more!).

Yes, we know… Easier said than done! At BusinessWiz, we see on a daily basis how it might be challenging or even overwhelming to understand how to start your company’s journey on the path to Diversity & Inclusion, especially if you are at the very beginning of the awareness stage and you don’t even know if you want to commit to such an important change.

As one of the leading B2B Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) services providers in Finland, we are constantly in touch with many business leaders and decision-makers through our D&I assessments, consultations, and training. To make it easier for you, we’ve gathered the most common questions we receive and we’re about to debunk the common myths that prevent companies from committing to a long-lasting company culture change. Let’s get started!

FAQ #1: Why should I, as leader, care about Diversity & Inclusion in the workplace?

Over the past decade, countless researches, reports, and indexes have been published with the main goal of demonstrating through concrete case studies, numbers, and projections how businesses all around the world have benefited from having embedded Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) into their company culture. McKinsey has shown that companies with more culturally and ethnically diverse executive teams were 33 % more likely to see better-than-average profits (2017) and companies with below-average cultural diversity are performing 19 % less in terms of innovation than their competitors with well-managed above-average culturally diverse teams (BCG Diversity & Innovation Survey, 2017).

It’s now safe to say that D&I is a key factor not only as part of an integration process, but also in purely business terms. The question isn’t anymore about whether Diversity & Inclusion are beneficial in your company culture, it’s rather about what are the actionable steps you can follow to start or to implement data-informed Diversity & Inclusion changes within your workplace, in order to make it more attractive to talent and more profitable.

FAQ #2: Why has Diversity & Inclusion recently become a topic of discussion in Finland?

The Nordics, and especially Finland, have been and still are facing a huge challenge: the skill gap. And have you ever heard of companies growing without the right set of talent, let alone without any employees at all? Nordic countries benefit from a good rate of skilled immigrants and asylum seekers but are – in most cases – lacking a company culture that supports Diversity & Inclusion in the workplace, eventually fueling the unemployment problem that costs Finnish taxpayers about 28 millions per year (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment of Finland, 2017-2018). A research by Technology Industries Finland (2018) highlighted that by 2021 53,000 workers will be needed in the Finnish tech industry. After the quite challenging period of the Covid-19 pandemic, 2021 has now arrived and you – not only those working in tech – can no longer wait. The trends for the future are clear:

Internationalization: the working population is aging (in Finland faster than elsewhere) and it is sure that companies will soon need talent from abroad. This scenario is now more feasible than ever, as Covid-19 and its whole new “WFH culture” taught us: your employees won’t even need to be in the office or – in some cases – in the same country as you! Cultural diversity within your company will be therefore inevitable and you will need to learn how to retain your talent through a good company culture, in which all your employees feel welcome and included.
Increase in productivity: in the next 50 years, we’ll have to increase our productivity by 80% if we want to maintain the economic growth to the current level. This will come both from automation and from team performance, and, as we’ve seen, companies with well-managed above-average culturally diverse teams perform better (McKinsey, 2017).
Automation and need for innovation: companies will have to be more innovative and adaptive to be ahead of their competitors. And what teams are more innovative Yep, you guessed it right: diverse teams!

However you look at it, working on your company culture is vital in order to become attractive to international talent and thus to perform better than your competitors, taking advantage of this growth opportunity. We had the chance to talk about the topic with Caroline Bondier, Process Development Director at Kone. As a company leader, she’s had the chance to see firsthand how a strong commitment to Diversity & Inclusion can improve the company’s performance in terms of innovation, collaboration, and customer relations:

"I think Diversity & Inclusion in Finland is a very important topic. The reason is that we have a shortage of talent in multiple sectors and, at the same time, an abundance of foreigners educated in Finnish universities looking for their first opportunity. In the past decade, there have been many efforts in big Finnish companies, especially with so many of them putting Diversity & Inclusion in the workplace at the forefront of their strategy. As a change leader in my company and a foreigner myself, I had the chance to see firsthand how this has positively affected innovativeness, customer centricity, and collaboration in our company. However, there are some difficulties that companies face - especially SMEs - when embarking on this journey, such as fear of cultural change, loss of identity, and language barriers. It is then really important for companies to be committed to a long-lasting change and invest in building frameworks to succeed in incremental and structured change that supports the success of the company, and also makes both native and foreign employees included and fulfilled in the journey."

Caroline Bondier

Process Development Director, Kone

FAQ #3: How can my company start its journey towards Diversity & Inclusion?

It really depends on the stage your company’s at! On a general level, we recommend you adopt a holistic approach to changing your company culture. It’s important to start from the basics, have a look at the areas you need or want to focus on, and take small steps in order to create a long-lasting change. As much as we’d like to say so, a single Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) workshop won’t change anything! There is no secret recipe: the commitment of putting company culture as the central focus must be shared throughout the organization and must be embedded in the company goals. To make your company culture more diverse and inclusive and to ensure a long-lasting change, the ideal path to follow is:

Start with an assessment to analyse the current status of D&I in your company: this will bring data to the table allowing you to implement data-infomed actions. Have a look at our Diversity & Inclusion Survey to dive in deeper in the perks and the process.
After the assessment’s final reporting, follow up with a fixed term implementation plan linked to the company goals that – with small action items – will eventually lead to a long-lasting impact in your company culture (check out our Company Culture Services to learn more!).
Strengthen your company’s D&I commitment through ad-hoc workshops or programs, aimed to educate your employees on specific topics, such as inclusive leadership, cross-cultural sales and communication, unconscious bias training, and more. At BusinessWiz we offer an extensive plethora of Diversity & Inclusion Workshops and various training programs (such as the Inclusive Leadership Programme) that can be customized to perfectly fit the company’s needs, check them out!

However, this doesn’t mean that your only option is to begin with an end-to-end set of Diversity & Inclusion services! You might still have some doubt and you might want to explore a bit, to see if D&I is the right solution for your organization… That’s completely fine! You can start from workshops aimed to raise awareness among your employees or to obtain leadership buy-in. Likewise, if your company has already made an assessment or evaluated the pain-points, you can choose to proceed with a specific service (e.g. workshops, leadership program). Book a free exploration call with our D&I expert to see what topics might be the right fit for your specific business case!

FAQ #4: How do I understand what Diversity & Inclusion services are the right fit for my specific case?

As we mentioned above, it really depends on the current needs of your company. Usually there are 3 possible scenarios:

You are committed to a long-lasting change and you want the complete package of end-to-end services. Start with the assessment (Diversity & Inclusion Survey), follow up with the implementation plan led to create a long-lasting impact in your company culture (Company Culture Services), and finally strengthen your company’s Diversity & Inclusion through ad-hoc workshops or programs tailored to your specific needs.
You have previously done a Diversity & Inclusion assessment (either internally or with external vendors) and you already know what areas in your company culture need improvement. Let’s create together customized workshops or tailored training about specific topics you need help with! For example, our services blanket a wide variety of topics and we can find the right fit for you, depending on what you are specifically looking for: if your goal is to work on your leadership according to Diversity & Inclusion principles, you will definitely benefit from our Inclusive Leadership training. Alternatively, if you are focusing on employee development and you want to raise awareness on Diversity & Inclusion topics, such as unconscious bias and cross-cultural communication, the Diversity & Inclusion Workshops are a better fit.
You aren’t sure whether Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) is the right thing for your workplace and you’re still evaluating pros and cons. In this case, we suggest you start with a general workshop (or series of workshops) on D&I, that will allow you to measure and understand if this is the right path for your business.

FAQ #5: Our company is already diverse and international. Why should we be interested in Diversity & Inclusion services?

Let’s start by making clear that diversity alone is not enough. Having a diverse team that doesn’t feel the sense of belonging and inclusion won’t help you, and it will most likely damage your innovation and productivity levels.

As a matter of fact, diverse companies actually need more support and services because they also need inclusion to benefit from said diversity!

As shown in the graphic, having diversity in your team does not necessarily guarantee that you’re actually benefiting from it. If the team is not well managed, the productivity level will decrease. However, diverse teams that are well managed will significantly outperform homogenous teams, and guess who’ll benefit from it? Your business as a whole, of course! Your employees will feel included and valued, your productivity level will be boosted, your brand will gain recognition amongst the international talent pool, and much much more.

Of course we’re not suggesting that this change will happen in a snap of fingers, but if you’re committed to creating better team dynamics, if you want to obtain more innovation and profitability from the diversity that you already have, then it is important for you to look at the overall company culture and take decisive action to implement inclusion.

Key takeaways:

Finnish businesses need international talent to be competitive and thrive and, in order to do so they have to attract, include and retain that talent. How? By boosting their commitment to build a Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) strategy!
More culturally and ethnically diverse executive teams were 33 % more likely to see better-than-average profits (2017) and companies with below-average cultural diversity are performing 19 % less in terms of innovation than their competitors with well-managed above-average culturally diverse teams.
By 2021 53,000 workers will be needed in the Finnish tech industry: now is the moment to act!
The question isn’t anymore about whether D&I is beneficial in your company culture, it’s rather about what are the steps you can follow to start or to implement data-informed Diversity & Inclusion changes within your workplace, in order to make it more attractive to talent and more profitable.
Take a holistic approach to changing your company culture! It’s important to start from the basics, have a look at the areas you need or want to focus on, and take small steps in order to create a long-lasting change.

About the author:

Aurora Grion is the Inclusive Marketing Specialist at BusinessWiz and a Diversity, Inclusion, and Cultural Studies enthusiast. She has been living and working in 4 different countries in the last 5 years and has therefore a very concrete take on Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) in workplaces, especially when it comes to inclusion of international talent.

Aurora holds a MA cum laude in Cultural Management and is the Vice-President of +Collective, an organization which promotes equality and inclusion in Finland through events and media production.