Social responsibility
Vaasan would not be Vaasan without our employees. It is crucial for us to offer a fair, equal and comfortable working environment to our employees. We believe this is a prerequisite for high-quality products.
Good leadership, meaningful and motivating work and the ability to influence and participate in developing our working environment are the key to well-being at work.
We promise our employees:
- The right to equal treatment
- The opportunity for personal improvement
- A developing and dynamic work environment
Everyone has the right to equal treatment
Diversity is a strength that should be cherished. This is why representatives of employees and the employer have together compiled Vaasan’s equality plan aiming at preventing discrimination based on gender, enhancing equal treatment of men and women, and supporting respectful and appreciative conduct. The company is responsible for the realisation of equal treatment, but every employee also needs to commit to enhancing equality and to take actions to stop mistreatment.
How is the goal of equal treatment visible in our work place? For example, the Equal Treatment Guide – used in orientation of new employees – defines in a practical way what equality means in everyday work. To promote equal treatment, Vaasan Ltd also makes sure – among other things – that employees are equally positioned in different tasks and that knowledge is transferred through mentoring programmes. Active and open communication is key in developing leadership practices.
Developing employees’ expertise and continuous improvement
Our employees and their development are the core of our social responsibility. We are in a very labour-intensive industry, which calls for systematic investments in maintaining employee’s expertise and ability to work. We want to offer all our employees the possibility to develop themselves and to find their own career path.
We support managers in developing their leadership skills. We believe that a majority of learning happens through working, but many other methods, like project work, mentoring and training, can also be useful. The goals for developing individual and team-level skills are set during performance reviews, held once or twice a year.
Leadership and managerial work are in the centre of skill development. We have defined Vaasan’s leadership competences that we use in evaluating leadership and related development needs and actions.
One example of continuous and systematic development of professional knowhow is that Vaasan Ltd has participated in the planning of the bakery industry vocational degree together with the Finnish National Board of Education. Parts of the vocational training have been conducted at Vaasan Ltd since 1999. We have also participated in designing the food technology specialised vocational degree (EAT).
Developing working community
Vaasan’s strategic goals, values and the cornerstones of corporate culture – that is communication, co-operation and commitment – are the base for developing our work community. Our goal is to be an excellent workplace, and to achieve that we ask for feedback on regular basis from our employees.
Employee surveys aim at mapping what our employees think of their own work, the work community, leadership practices and the functioning of the whole organisation. Our goal is to find positive factors to enhance and to identify development areas.
We want to make sure that every Vaasan employee can participate in developing their working community. Annual performance reviews are a central tool in this work.
