Our people

In June 2021 Nokia announced increased choice and flexibility for employees following COVID-19. Around 26,000 employees responded to a company-wide survey about their remote working experience during, the COVID-19 pandemic, and their opinions were also sought on their preferences for working after the pandemic. As a result, new guidelines came into effect from 1 January 2022, that provide flexibility for employees to work up to three days a week remotely, as well as increased support for flexible working hours and fully virtual working.

Two new benefit policies were also announced in 2022 in unison with our new people strategy. These new benefits will extend support that already exists in some countries to all our people worldwide, turning the benefits that some employees already enjoy into a global minimum standard for all our people.

Read more details on our new flexible working practices link: Nokia increases choice and flexibility for employees following COVID-19 | Nokia

The market for skilled employees in our business is extremely competitive. To help us adapt to changing labour market dynamics, we are focused on building a human-centric, innovative, flexible organization. It is imperative that we continue to focus on motivation, inclusivity, creativity and continuous learning to build the skills we need for the future. We again held our annual Global Days of Learning where all employees can join virtual presentations, round tables and discussions. Topics this year included our sustainability strategic approach and a look into our work with human rights. NokiaEDU is the company’s learning organization that offers learning solutions to our customers, partners and employees.

We identify, develop, and retain skilled employees in our business. We therefore continually develop our culture, and refresh our talent management activities, performance support, and career development. Our performance and talent management approach creates a strategic and integrated framework which covers company goals, individual performance, talent management, career development, reward, and recognition.

We respect the right to collective bargaining and freedom of association. Collective bargaining agreements are local, and in most countries where we have collective bargaining agreements employees who have chosen not to be members of a union are also covered. Employees can choose freely to join, not join, or leave unions and associations and select their representatives based on local and international practices. We encourage active, open communication and dialog with employees and/or their representatives.

In countries where local works councils operate, we work with them as needed. We communicate regularly with employees directly as well as in meetings such as the European Works Council (EWC) in Europe.

Employees and management prepare and participate in the annual EWC plenary. We offer free elections for employees to choose union representatives. The majority of production employees were represented by an independent trade union or covered by collective bargaining agreements.

Employee representatives are entitled to participate in trainings that are a necessity in order to take care of employee representative duties and to increase their awareness of trade union rights and obligations. Additionally, employee representatives are provided the opportunity to use company infrastructure during the workday.

Inclusion & Diversity at Nokia is governed by the company's Inclusion and Diversity Steering Committee. The committee focuses on critical Inclusion and Diversity topics and ambitions that make a difference on Nokia-level.

The committee makes recommendations to the company's leadership team and ensures Nokia Inclusion and Diversity’s business relevance through connecting Inclusion and Diversity targets with company operations, strategy, and business objectives.

The committee creates wider accountability for the company's Inclusion and Diversity results and reports the progress to leaders and organization overall.

Nokia's Inclusion & Diversity Steering Committee consists of the head of Inclusion and Diversity, Head of People Direction, Head of People Value Proposition, Head of Sustainability, Chief Legal Officer, Legal & Compliance DEI Committee, business group representatives, Talent Attraction, and representatives of Nokia's major employee resource groups: ABLE, StrongHer and EQUAL.

We want to role-mode the best Inclusion and Diversity practices and consistently benchmark ourselves against other players in the tech industry. Our target is to consistently improve our position in global benchmarks such as Bloomberg Gender Equality Index and Workplace Pride which measure LGBT+ inclusion.

Our key standards Working at Height, Rigging & Lifting, and Driving and Electrical are implemented with non-negotiables for effective controls to manage risk on a global scale in all markets. Incident management, and reporting and investigation programs encourage all employees and contractors working on our behalf to report all incidents including near misses and high potential incidents.

Our wellbeing focus adjusted in 2020 to fit to the new circumstances where a temporary work from home policy was applied to the majority of employees globally. As everyone’s circumstances were very different, our wellbeing programs supported employees to cope with the situation both mentally and physically.