Why should organisations in Finland embrace remote work more than before?

Finnish version of the article : Here

Remote work is not a new trend in Northern Europe. As of 2019, the share of employees working remotely regularly, or at least occasionally, was significant in most Northern European countries, including Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands. Countries in Northern Europe are those with the largest growth in remote work since 2009 (Future Place Leadership 2021). 

Finland has been pioneering in remote work from home for many years. The remote work share steadily rose and reached the first place in 2020 by an amazing 25,1% of the working age population (Zafar 2020, Eurostat 2021). 

Many companies have already noticed that most of their work activities could be conducted remotely. Yet, several hindrances still exist for companies to fully embrace remote work. It seems to be more of a mandatory move for survival than part of a strategy. At the end of the day, the most important thing is to find and keep the right employees because the correlation between the quality of talent and business performance has been proven several times and the war for talent is heating up (Keller 2017, Kelly 2021). Of course, organizations need to be convinced that overcoming the technical and administrative practicalities of remote work is worthwhile. 

Besides demographic change, there are three other megatrends in the future of work: globalization, technology, and climate change (Dølvik & Steen 2018). All of these factors have a lot to do with remote work but still, even with promising percentages in favor of remote work, many organizations still require on-site presence. According to Raisa’s job search experience in Finland, out of 15 organisations in the knowledge industry, 13 have required on-site presence.

In this article, we would like to share, based on our findings and experiences, why we think that remote work is here to stay. We believe that embracing the remote work culture will bring a crucial advantage for Finnish organizations which are struggling with a lack of workforce. 

Remote work fosters a global mindset

Based on our experiences, to make remote work successful, organizations must create the best prerequisites to build the remote work culture and practices through leadership based on the trust of their employees. The efforts invested by the leaders and the teams to build a remote work culture and practices pay back in various ways.

Firstly, it brings a global mindset to the company culture. Indeed, remote employees bring a variety of new trends, knowledge and practices coming from outside of the national borders, which gives a global and diverse mindset to the company. The more diverse companies are, the more likely they will outperform less diverse peers on profitability (Dixon-Fyle et al. 2020). Remote employees bring different ways of thinking and solving problems, which creates viability and prerequisites for innovation, while lowering the threshold for companies to go international. 

With strong remote work practices, it is also possible to bring diversity to the organization without physically attracting people to Finland or to other Finnish cities. In Finland, only 7% of people aged between 25-64 years-old would be willing to relocate because of work (Taloustutkimus 2021). Thus, developing the remote work practices are a sustainable solution for the Finnish market as well.

Remote work empowers employees

Secondly, when employees are allowed to start or pursue their career wherever they live, steady remote work practices create a wider sense of commitment (Choo et al 2016). Remote work empowers them, they take the lead on their own responsibilities, while finding the most relevant and suitable moments to connect with other team members. Their unique contribution brings a specific added value to their work. They become interdependent to each other the more they practice remote work.

Nathalie lives in Finland and another colleague of hers lives in Sweden. Indeed, the pandemic offered limited opportunities for well-thought and meaningful face-to-face encounters between each other and with their colleagues based in Denmark. To resolve this, the whole team decided to create online recreational moments for them to build these bonding moments. Indeed, team spirit and the sense of belonging is more about bonding and less about being physically together all the time. In the end, they are at the initiative of building their unique remote work culture.

Remote work brings psychological safety

Thirdly, good remote working practices and remote leadership bring psychological security for work continuation. Raisa led a team of language teachers remotely from 2017 to 2021, who worked in a field that could be considered as highly-risky, as the public procurement is organized every 2-3 years and the amount of work was not always equally spread during one contract period. Yet, the team remained quite stable, even the area where the work was conducted, changed nation-wide (i.e. the area where students lived changed). If one area was lost in public procurement, the other was won. This brought a higher job security compared to the work of teachers whose job was location-tied. 

When work is not tied to one place, the business is adapting itself more easily, team members and leaders are less resistant to change of practices. Therefore, companies embracing remote work become more agile and are able to change their plans swiftly, if needed. Indeed, it seems that when work feels safer, leaders’ and team members’ mindset are more prepared for change (Strueby 2019, Andersson et al 2020). 

Remote work attracts and retains talent

Finland is willing to be more known on a global map and wishes to attract the best talents that the world can offer. Remote work can be one of the solutions when it actually allows people to live in another city or another country.

The geographical location of Finland in the Northern Eastern part of Europe, its harsh climate and the fierce competition between other Northern European countries should convince Finland to invest in remote work practices more than before.

Finland is a highly digitized country and remote work is a work practice that has been accepted by Finnish employers and employees for many years. This experience should be easily replicable for international remote work. By looking outside Finnish national borders, organizations in Finland could reach out to an international talent pool and offer international remote work contracts.

Indeed, 93% of Finnish companies have less than 10 employees (Yrittäjät 2021). International recruitment and relocation are a huge investment for them but not taking the leap to hire internationals onsite or remote can cost more and might undermine the growth of their companies. 

For several years, Nathalie has been interviewing international talents for work-based immigration. The company culture, the international environment that a company can provide, the work responsibilities are often cited as the top three reasons to choose a company, while the value proposition of a country comes after. If Finnish companies want to attract the best talents, they have to make sure that their workforce is as diverse as possible. With good remote work practices, internationals’ recruitment can bring diversity, efficiency while being cost-effective.

The demographic change in the Finnish society leaves few options and remote work is one of them.

Remote Work and the concept of third culture company 

By putting effort into remote work culture, remote leadership and daily remote practices, a unique company culture arises: A third company culture. 

Third company culture is a new concept that is more rooted to the more known concept of third culture kids: third culture is a blend of parents’ culture and the culture of the residence country. Third culture kids travel back and forth between the places and experience the reality differently than those who don’t (Wilmerding 2018). We believe that third culture companies are the future of work. Third culture companies make it easy to think outside the box and give an uneasily replicable competitive advantage, which can be measured financially and in terms of talent attraction and retention.

Conclusion 

We have witnessed that remote work fosters a global mindset. It makes leaders and team members grow, it empowers them and gives the most precious gift: the ability to drive their own work by building unique work practices, act on their personal and professional development while being less resistant to change and more adaptable to new ways of working. It also brings psychological safety and gives rise to a unique work culture that cannot be easily replicable. Finally, remote work can facilitate talent attraction and allows less prominent countries, such as Finland, to stand out.

“The industries or companies that succeed in reaping the benefits of having people working anywhere will be the winners - not only by enabling creativity in creating new products and services but also by attracting the top talent” (Future Place Leadership 2021.)

The authors

Nathalie Dedella is French and has been living in Finland since 2015. She was hired 4 years ago by Moving Talent, a Danish recruitment and HR agency operating in Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. Her employer agreed that she would work remotely from Finland, on a local contract, while traveling regularly between Denmark and Sweden. She fully embraces remote work when it’s coupled with well-thought and meaningful face-to-face encounters.

“When I relocated to Helsinki in 2015, it seemed like the work opportunities that I wanted were quite limited for me. When I was offered a remote work opportunity, it opened the way to a Nordic career. It gave me the possibility to work with a wide range of Nordic and international stakeholders. Above all, remote work enabled me to utilize the competences that I built throughout a career of 10 years while acquiring new ones”. 

Raisa Haikala is Finnish, but she hasn’t lived in Finland since 2012. During her years abroad, she worked remotely for a Finnish organization for 6 years. Lately, Raisa resigned from her position as a service director to focus on her doctoral studies in Oulu Business School. She is interested in cross-sectoral innovation, the role of inter-organizational learning in innovation and innovation value capture, especially in immigrants’ employment services. She’s currently looking for new opportunities and starting her own business in Sweden.

“The past nine years outside of Finland have changed me tremendously. Firstly, I gained experience as an immigrant in very different environments and language-wise in three levels: as a total beginner who couldn’t even read the Chinese characters, as an advanced language user (UK) and as an independent language user (Sweden). Years abroad taught me a valuable lesson of how skills-based microlearning can accelerate your learning and integration to your new country. Without the possibility of remote work and as a highly-work-orientated person, I might have ended up changing profession.”

References

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