Remote work | The professor’s claim: It is already difficult to get employees back to work in Finland – This is how large companies comment

Is it remote work has already become such an advantage that it is difficult to get people doing specialist work in jobs?

The question was raised by a finance professor at Aalto University Vesa Puttonen on Tuesday in the messaging service X, i.e. the former Twitter.

“Autumn starts. I’ve talked to a few HR managers/managers. Difficulties in getting employees to work. However, the employer pays the salary. Is remote work a so-called achieved advantage?” Puttonen asked.

The topic is a hot topic of discussion in Finnish companies now that people are returning to work from their summer holidays.

The human resources managers of Finland’s large employing companies say that the subject is also strongly present in recruitment.

Job seekers ask about the company’s remote work practices in practically every job interview for a specialist position.

Elisa’s personnel director Merja Ranta-aho says that in Finnish companies there is now a lot of talk about when it is worth and when you should come to the workplace and above all, what is done at the workplace.

“Myself, I would like to turn the conversation specifically to how to do work well,” says Ranta-aho.

In Ranta-aho’s opinion, it is important to consider the following questions in the discussion about work: is the work something that can be genuinely done, from anything? Is the employee more of a part of the work community participating in joint development? And what is the importance of physical presence when building trust within the workplace?

“Of course, it’s always difficult to change what you’re used to and change back to another model. After all, we sometimes have to have discussions about the fact that some jobs really require regular and generous attendance,” he says.

Pandemic towards the end, Elisa’s policy has become that the teams review their practices. There are different teams and practices vary. A typical amount at Elisa is two to three days a week in the office.

“Of course, we are guided to think that the rules do not only come from what is comfortable, but from what the work requires in the short and long term.”

The struggle between remote and in-person work is not limited to Finland alone. For example, the large American bank Goldman Sachs Group is starting to force its employees to the office five days a week.

The majority of Goldman Sachs’ productive employees already work at the office for five days, but the bank is dissatisfied with the reluctance of other personnel groups to return to the office full-time.

Ranta-aho thinks the whole discussion about the office escape is silly.

“You shouldn’t get into a discussion with adults about whether you have to come to the office or not, when you have understood together how the work is best done.”

In his opinion, the key thing would be to realize that coming to the workplace or doing remote work are tools for achieving results.

“We should focus much more on how we achieve results in general,” says Ranta-aho.

“It has a bit of a taste that doing work is being present at the workplace and not actually producing value.”

of the OP group personnel director Hannakaisa Länskisalmi says that OP’s places of work have also caused discussion.

“Many companies have forced people to go to the office three days a week, so people have asked if we shouldn’t do this,” says Länsisalmi.

Länsisalmi estimates that companies are now looking for the best possible way to organize work. However, he emphasizes that the OP has not generally defined how many days a week one can work remotely. Such a definition is not forthcoming either.

“We have already agreed on the principles of hybrid work when Corona started to ease. The teams themselves agree when they will spend the next few days at the workplace and when they will be remote,” says Länsisalmi.

“The jobs are very different in nature. There is no right amount at the moment that fits all different jobs”.

However, some of the work cannot be done remotely at OP for safety and work equipment reasons, as well as for customer service reasons, says Länsisalmi. On the other hand, for OP, hybrid work does not mean that the individual can always decide to be remotely.

Länsisalmi does not say the average number of hours in the office. According to him, there is no team-specific monitoring of that, but there is information on the utilization rates of office spaces. The use of workspaces is slightly lower than before the corona virus.

“Today, a large part of the work can be done remotely, and even before the pandemic we had a lot of people who sometimes worked remotely. But we have stated that our context for doing work today is hybrid work.”

Miscarriage personnel director Matti Mettälä says that, on average, about half of the working time is done remotely by K-Campus office workers.

“In that way, we don’t have such a problem that it would be terribly difficult to get people here,” says Mettälä.

After Corona, Kesko defined certain principles for doing hybrid work. However, the company has not determined the number of days spent at the office.

“Job tasks and customer needs determine what kind of work methods and which workplace at any given time best support the achievement of the work’s goal,” says Mettälä.

“I think the essential thing is not whether there is compulsion or freedom to do something, but that the matter is thought about according to the work. There is quite a lot of discussion in the public about how to work remotely.”