Equality and equal opportunities as a standard

At Veritas, equal treatment and equal opportunities are a standard in our daily operations: we welcome everyone to boldly be who they truly are. This is particularly reflected in gender and age equality, but also in our strong bilingualism. In a personnel survey conducted in 2022, 86 per cent of the personnel stated they felt they were being treated equally and equitably. This is the same result as last year. Since the year 2022 was challenging owing, for instance, to the change negotiations, we consider it to be a good achievement that the experience of equality and equal opportunities remained at this level.

In 2022, we have paid particular attention to diversity, equity and inclusion. We are still in the early phases of our journey in relation to these themes, but we are, nevertheless, on our way. We have taken as our point of departure increasing the awareness of the personnel by, for instance, organising for our personnel a lecture on the basics of DEI in companies. Furthermore, it is our intention to increase the diversity of our personnel through paying attention to our recruiting practices.

We have regularly participated in the ”Responsible Employer” campaign, within the sphere of which we undertake to comply with the principles of being a responsible employer. We have, further, undertaken a diversity promise, allowing us to encourage people from different backgrounds to apply for our open vacancies.

Age distribution of personnel

Managers, %

At Veritas, the salaries of all our employees are based upon the demands of the relevant task and the competence of the employee and their performance. We apply the Hay Job Evaluation system in classifying the demand level of tasks, which renders our salary practices transparent. We particularly focus on all employees possessing sufficient information on remuneration-related matters and for managers to be genuinely able to review remuneration-related matters with the employees, along with the reasoning for same.

According to the equality report of 2021, at Veritas, the woman’s euro is 95 cents. We are levelling out the salary differences between genders in connection with internal and external recruitments and are seeking additional means for levelling out the differences between the euros through a more thorough analysis of the salary data.

The foundation for the employee experience is laid already at recruitment

We lay the foundations for a positive employee experience already when recruiting a new employee. We treat all applicants respectfully and fairly, and keep them constantly informed about the progress of the recruitment process. We communicate openly about the various phases of recruitment and the factors underlying our decisions. All applicants are personally informed about the recruitment process, and no one is left in uncertainty. We strive for interviews to be as relaxed and human-centric as possible. We believe that a positive candidate experience creates a solid foundation for the new employee’s commitment to Veritas.

In order to constantly improve our candidate experience, we conduct a candidate experience survey at the end of each recruitment, sent to be filled in by every candidate who has applied for the position. This allows us to obtain valuable feedback on our recruitment process and employer image.

Gender allocation per personnel group

Comprehensive onboarding as the basis of competence

At Veritas, an individual induction plan is devised and a personal onboarding trainer appointed for each new employee. In addition to the on-boarding training concerning the employee’s own job, the plan also includes an introduction to Veritas’ other functions, as well as the sector of earnings-related pension insurance as a whole. A personal onboarding plan is also devised for those who move on to new tasks or return to work from a longer period of absence from work. The scope of the plan depends on the employee’s work experience and duration of absence. It is particularly important for us that both new and more experienced Veritas employees are always up to date about the regulations governing the field. We have elaborated upon this in the Good Governance section of our report.

Onboarding combines contact and remote working as well as takes advantage of online training. During the onboarding phase, new employees have at least one follow-up discussion with their managers and, following the onboarding phase, a concluding discussion. We receive particularly good feedback on organising our onboarding from our new employees and based on the feedback received, we continue to develop onboarding that is as flexible and individual as possible.

Every year, each employee meets with their manager for a motivation and competence discussion to consider future competence demands and the employee’s preferences for individual development. The discussion serves as a basis for devising a personal development plan to ensure the adequate competence and development of the employee. A range of development methods are available, including a substitute system, job expansion and enrichment, job rotation and cross-training, as well as modern virtual training platforms.

Because of the broad and diversified job descriptions, we can offer comprehensive and holistic customer service. At Veritas, every employee has the opportunity to influence one’s own work, learn new and develop themselves so as to achieve the common goals. In addition to their expertise and competence, all employees are expected to uphold their service approach and technical skills.

The ever-changing operational environment and technological advances call for new types of competence from us, and we must, indeed, monitor the progress of the world closely. Continuous improvement is our way of doing things; both our operating methods and our skillsets are continuously evolving as part our everyday activities.

Towards a novel culture

Veritas prioritises employee well-being very high. In 2022, we focused particularly on reviving communality following an extended period of remote working, the evolvement of our corporate culture and responsible work conduct, along with the continuous theme of a more open communication culture and flexible working life.

In the fall of 2022, we launched the Veritas 3.0 project, aiming to describe our future corporate culture and ponder how to achieve that. The working group consisted of nine employees from different parts of the organisation, headed by CEO Carl Haglund. The working group convened regularly during the fall and the early part of the year and the entire personnel was able to participate in the project in the form of surveys and group assignments. At the time of writing this report, the work is still on-going, but our ideal culture has crystallised and the implementation of the culture throughout the organisation is in progress. We believe that by continuing our active dialogue concerning our day-to-day activities and choices will allow us to reach our goal.

A good employee experience is made up of the little actions of everyday life. In 2022 we both introduced new practices and continued with the tried-and-true practices in an effort to further refine our employee experience. As a new practice in the spring of 2022, we introduced small celebrations for our employees who have finished their probational period. We want to pay tribute to this significant milestone of the working relationship and to demonstrate how much we appreciate the fact that an employee is willing to continue our journey together. Furthermore, as a new experimentation, our entire personnel participated in a wellbeing lecture and wellbeing contest. The winners of the contest were rewarded for their diligent pause gymnastics and other activity that enhances occupational wellbeing during the work day, such as being considerate towards one’s co-workers, for instance, by thanking, complementing them or by asking how they are doing.

In the fall of 2021, we launched the initiative to reward the Valuable of the Month and based on the positive feedback received for the concept, we continued with this practice. The rewarding is based on actions that are in line with our values and has proven a great method for keeping our company values as part of our daily work. Through rewarding the Valuable of the Month, we want to bring forth everyday actions, successes, acts of courage, survival stories and, of course, even blunders that have resulted in valuable lessons. We have also felt that a good on-going practice is to conduct newcomer discussions with new and departure discussions with our departing employees. These discussions allow us to obtain valuable feedback on our activities, based on which we are able, for instance, to develop our managerial work or smooth out our processes.

In 2022, we have determined in collaboration with the shop stewards and the occupational health personnel what good co-working relationships and responsible work conduct mean at Veritas and how we act, if we encounter problems along the way. The definition and the operational model have been discussed with the entire personnel in discussion meetings and every Veritasian has also completed an online course related to this.

We also seek to actively facilitate the work and life balance through flexible working hours and remote working possibilities. Being family-oriented is a daily reality for us. It is a significant part of the work of every manager to support the work ability of their team members and to jointly identify flexible solutions, for instance, to challenges entailed by different life stages.

Organisation in transition

In 2022, Veritas’ organisation and operating methods were reformed in order to improve competitiveness. In this connection, change negotiations pertaining to nearly the entire organisation were conducted during the period of March through April. As a result of these changes, numerous Veritasians began in new tasks and the employment relationship of 17 persons was terminated. The entire organisation was supported in the difficult situation in collaboration, for instance, with occupational healthcare and the terminated persons had the chance to participate in extensive relocation training.

The transition has not been easy for the organisation and it is also reflected in occupational wellbeing that we measure through the eNPS indicator in personnel surveys regularly during the year. We believe that reviewing the reasoning for the change, joint discussions as well as the development of operational methods together will aid in coping with also this transition and, thereby, in improving employee satisfaction.

eNPS*