Becoming aware of the different dimensions of diversity and building inclusive culture has been an important learning journey along my career. How to recognize the biases we all have in our thinking and how to promote an inclusive culture are essential skills of today’s leadership. One of the key takeaways for me has been to understand that people see and experience things from very different perspectives. And something that I still struggle with almost every day.
Part of the journey is to start recognizing your background, privileges and biases in thinking. While this requires constant learning, just putting on the “lenses” of realizing that we all have our biases has helped me become more conscious, rather than falling into the trap of thinking all our behavior in business is based on rationale. We also need to accept that there will never be perfect choices from everyone's perspectives. But there can be an effort in trying to think about topics from a variety of perspectives before making decisions.
Bringing together different working cultures
We are currently preparing a joint dance of two listed companies Vincit and Bilot, and working together on our future direction. Bringing together two companies and building a shared foundation and common practices requires a lot of trust and open communication. An important part of this is to actively listen to different points of view and keep the perspective wide, but also being transparent about decisions and changes that impact people.
Psychological safety and a culture, where people feel safe to share their learnings and mistakes, is at the core of our success at Vincit. It is important for us to make our customers thrive, as well as being a workplace where Vincitizens feel a strong sense of belonging. A key value at Vincit is respecting each other as persons and experts, asking for help and helping each other out.
From an inclusive culture perspective, we have strong local communities as a home base for our people, and Vincit was yet again awarded 1st place in the Great Place to Work listing! A great example of our culture is that in the Great Place to Work survey, 96% of Vincitizens felt that they can be themselves, enjoy each other’s company and count on and support each other. This is definitely something we want to hold onto in the future as well. So that everyone at Vincit feels welcomed as themselves – even on Monday mornings.
Looking at diversity in the future Vincit after Summer, we will have around 850 experts from 30 nationalities, with 20% women and 80% men. Going forward, we want to attract a more diverse crowd to join the Vincit pond. Our goal is to raise the share of women at Vincit to 30% by 2025, as well as increase the cultural diversity and number of nationalities working at Vincit.
What's next?
Personally, I commit to promoting representation and building teams of different backgrounds in Vincit and its leadership. I will actively seek to improve my awareness and be open about my own learnings. As a company, we will also promote a culture of speaking up and having active conversation around diversity and inclusion topics.
We have kicked off the next phase of our journey. What would you like to hear from us going into the next steps?
Julius Manni,
CEO
