Our operations are carried out by an expert organisation consisting of 30 employees. Our organisational restructuring, which took effect at the beginning of August, means that our organisation now consists of three units and six function-specific teams. We are meeting the goals our owners have set for our business even better than before.

During the process of restructuring our organisation and updating our operating model, we engaged in active dialogue with all our personnel. In building the new organisation, the skills of our personnel were put to use with the aim of providing everyone with meaningful work. We managed to offer new professional challenges to several of our employees by upgrading tasks or job descriptions. In addition, four new employees joined our working community in the autumn.

Our organisational structure will be strengthening the themes we chose for our operations at the beginning of the year: trust, cooperation and transparency. Management, supervisory work and transparent information flow are also supported by the new activities of the extended Executive Board, which involve managers, HR and communications.

A shared journey of corporate culture creation

Our year of transformation has been supported by the systematic development of our corporate culture, which began in the spring. During our journey towards a shared corporate culture, we have together defined the desired corporate culture for SYK and updated our values that support our strategy and the purpose of our operations. The contribution of all the members of our personnel to this joint development work has been outstanding.

SYK’s corporate culture, issues relevant to our personnel at work, as well as development aspirations, were mapped and will be monitored with the help of the Siqni employee insight survey. The participation rate was 100%, both in the spring survey and the supporting interviews, and in the follow-up survey conducted in the second half of the year.

Developing our corporate culture and incorporating values into everyday business requires that people are seen and heard and actions are taken. Despite the year being affected by the pandemic, we have managed to actively implement our values through working remotely. We have increased our open internal communication, for example, at follow-up events focusing on the corporate culture journey and by the renewal of our intranet, Ilmari. The renewed intranet also has a new Thank You Channel, which is a great way for colleagues to express their appreciation of each other’s successes. Together, we have also developed SYKtärskyt, a way to meet our co-workers in the form of quick meetings and thus increase our sense of community.

We have an open mind to finding new solutions

In terms of competence development, the pandemic has shaped our priorities. The readiness of our personnel to switch to remote working was excellent, and our equipment and skills were up to the task, as we are constantly investing in the use of electronic tools.

Regarding the changes brought about by the pandemic and affecting our business environment, we used the Round Table concept, developed by us, to arrange several expert talks for all our personnel to listen to and think about. Our personnel have also kept up to date on our current research activities by taking part in our monthly RDI afternoons.

The specification of the capabilities required by our strategy has begun, and the measures to acquire them will be specified in future performance appraisal discussions.