Working for equality

Being open and treating everyone equally is important to us in everything we do. We do not tolerate discrimination in any form, and we promote fairness in all our activities. Our aim is to develop ways to promote equality in our work.

At the moment there is a major gender imbalance at Oulun Energia as 78% of our employees are men and 22% women. Women make up 29% of the management team, and 38% of the board members are women.

We want to play our part in breaking down the barriers between professions and in developing ways to attract jobseekers of different genders. Oulun Energia’s job application processes and hiring policies are gender-neutral. We endeavour to ensure that new job titles are not gendered in any of the languages we use. For instance, rather than using the masculine Finnish-language term esimies to refer to managers or supervisors, we use the gender-neutral esihenkilö. Oulun Energia has drawn up an equality and equal opportunities plan, and as part of implementing it we have carried out a survey to examine gender equality in pay. We also conduct an equality and equal opportunities survey for all our staff every two years.

Diversity enriches the work community and the way we work. Although the Oulun Energia work community is fairly homogeneous in terms of genders, languages and educational backgrounds, we are looking for new ways to increase diversity.

In our recruitment processes, we will pay careful attention to recruiting people with skills that we do not yet have. At the moment, we mainly carry out recruitment in Finnish, as a good command of the language is essential for many of the positions at the company. However, we are open to considering recruitment in other languages on a case-by-case basis.

Prosperity for the region

In addition to our staff, Oulun Energia also considers it highly important to invest in wellbeing in the Oulu region as a whole. We are involved in organising various cultural and leisure events, and we hold free sports days for people in the area every year. We also support local sports and cultural activities. Read more about our sponsorship partnerships here.

Aiming for zero accidents

However, safety is not just about avoiding accidents. Ensuring safety over the long term requires sustained long-term proactive work every day. To this end, Oulun Energia has introduced a safety programme, called Turvallisuus100, the success of which is measured by an occupational safety index.

In the index, we monitor the number of days of safe working, the number of points and time taken to process safety observations made by employees, the completion of accident and incident investigations within the target time, the number of safety rounds, and how measures to improve safety have been implemented. In 2024, our occupational safety index was at 98.8%. Our target is 100%. 

Focus on staff wellbeing

Oulun Energia’s goal is to be the most energetic workplace in Finland – to guarantee our employees an open and inspiring working environment that contributes to their well-being, helping everyone to succeed and learn.

In 2024, a Siqni employee survey was conducted to measure overall personnel satisfaction and how the most significant factors according to the employee are realised at the workplace. In the spring, overall satisfaction with the workplace stood at 75/100, the Flame index at 74, and eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) at 7.

Read more about staff wellbeing in Oulun Energia