Co-operation with a human touch

Our aim is to ensure that as many employees as possible contribute to the development of our shared work through their competence and views. For nearly a decade, our development work has involved the input of strategy groups, whose members represent different functions of the organisation, with varying roles and backgrounds and work experience ranging from a few months to decades. Each and every Veritas employee thus has an opportunity to influence and contribute with their competence, experience and personality.

Four times a year, we conduct a personnel survey to stay up-to-date on our employee well-being but also to hear their thoughts and opinions on topical questions. This enables each and every Veritas employee to influence the development of our activities and to participate in decision-making. In 2024, the surveys explored the status of our Veritas culture, perceptions of Veritas as a responsible employer and special successes and expectations.

The tools we have employed in promoting co-operation include not only normal collaboration activities, personnel days and our annual celebration, but also various virtual involvement and communality tools. We also increase the psychological safety and communality of our work community through visits to other teams’ meetings, shared breakfasts and exercise moments during breaks.

As a new means of enhancing the common understanding and, thus, co-operation of the personnel throughout the year, we introduced the “Hour in another’s shoes” concept. The concept involves introducing employees to each other’s work in different areas and the everyday work of other teams more closely. Those who participated in the trial felt that it was useful and necessary, because it helped them to get a better understanding of their own and others’ work tasks as part of the whole, even in a short period of time. The agile development model, which is aligned with our strategy, has been drafted together with product coordinators and managers. Our objective for the entire organisation is a transparent development process in which every single Veritas employee will have the opportunity to pitch development ideas for every process and to witness how such ideas proceed. Having planners that are open to everyone in the organisation plays an important role in this.

Target 7: We co-operate and involve our employees

Target: Average 90% (fully agrees or agrees to some extent)

In the personnel survey conducted in 2024, a total of 96 per cent of Veritas employees completely agreed or somewhat agreed with the questions concerning their ability to influence their own work and matters related to their work community, and their willingness to work towards shared goals.

Through our persistent work, we have succeeded to achieve a notable improvement in the co-operation and inclusion of all Veritas employees in common matters, since the corresponding figure in 2022 was 83. We will work hard to continue improving in this area and to exceed our target of ≥ 90 per cent.

Everyone is entitled to good leadership

Each employee has a right to good leadership. In order for this right to be realised, we also need an up-to-date description of what good leadership and management at Veritas means. For this reason, our entire team of supervisors worked together to update our leadership principles to ensure that they correspond to Veritas’ current strategy and target culture.

On the basis of the leadership principles, each supervisor was asked to complete a 360-degree survey. The results of the surveys have helped the supervisors to better identify their own areas for development as a means of advancing their own supervisory work.

The results of the surveys also helped to identify common areas that require development and joint training was initiated to support these areas. The joint training focused on management and team development. It is of paramount importance that supervisors also have the opportunity to focus on quality leadership and management and that they receive sufficient support for this purpose. The onboarding of new supervisors always includes training on leadership, and all supervisors participate once a month in supervisor meetings, where topical themes related to leadership and management are openly discussed and solutions are sought for everyday situations.

Target 8: Everyone is entitled to good leadership

Target: Average ≥ 8.5 / standard deviation ≤ 1

In the personnel surveys conducted in 2024, the managerial work received high scores (average 8.7 on the scale 1–10), which is a result of several years of development work.

In the future, our goal, for example, is to utilise regular coaching sessions for managers as a means of maintaining the high scores (average ≥ 8.5) and, most of all, to reduce the standard deviation of the scores (current SD 1.1; target ≤ 1).