Personnell wellbeing and competence development

Occupational health, safety and wellbeing

Satisfied employees with a high level of wellbeing, well looked after by their employer, are the foundation and key resource underlying all of our operations. We work in close cooperation with pension insurance companies and occupational health care partners to maintain work capacity and wellbeing.

Employee wellbeing is our intent and we support it through various means. For example, we offer sports and cultural benefits, and we help employees maintain their work ability by offering ergonomics assessments and a massage benefit. Our modern tools enable location-independent work, and our working hours models support flexibility in daily life.

The Savings Banks Group complies with the Occupational Safety and Health Act and is committed to promoting awareness of health and safety issues, preventing occupational diseases and accidents, promoting wellbeing and ergonomics, and reducing absences. Occupational health and safety issues are monitored internally and in cooperation with external partners.

The Savings Banks Group has comprehensive occupational health and safety activities that cover all employees and regional occupational safety organisations, and it conducts workplace surveys and monitoring at the local level, including both risk assessment and the basic workplace survey specified in the Occupational Safety and Health Act, as required by the Occupational Health Care Act. Workplace surveys are carried out regularly, for example, when working conditions change or when new operations are started. Occupational health and safety representatives participate in occupational safety discussions at the workplace.

The representatives selected by the employees must represent the personnel and promote wellbeing at work and share relevant information to the employer-employee negotiation committee, managers and employees. Examples of our other activities include an annual event focused on current topics that is attended by representatives of the senior management and shop stewards. HR Director in the Management Group of the Savings Banks’ Union Coop and, at some Savings Banks, the CEO, are responsible for occupational health and safety activities, as determined by bank-specific policy.

Personnel and competence development

Our success in the customer business and the digital transformation requires everyone to continuously maintain and develop their own expertise and work as a coherent team. We support the development of employee competence in the Savings Banks Group by building various models and by observing working practices, processes and customer encounters in order to develop our operations and expertise.

Our regular development and mentoring discussions are focused on performance management, supporting wellbeing and coping, as well as competence development and expectations concerning career advancement. In the discussions, each employee sets development targets for the next period and outlines the measures necessary to achieve those targets. The use of a job rotation model at the Savings Banks Group has promoted learning and the sharing of employee expertise. It has also provided employees with opportunities to participate in projects and take on new positions.

In 2023, the Savings Banks Group’s training, mentoring and meetings with networks took place both remotely and in person. The Savings Bank Centre conducted about 200 training activities, awareness-raising briefings and other events during the year. They included training programmes for employees and management, shorter internal trainings and online training activities, informative awareness-raising briefings and training focused on current issues in various business functions. We also offer various online courses for self-directed study for various target groups in our learning environment on an ongoing basis. In addition to developing substance knowledge, we continued to increase our competencies in areas such as change management, coaching supervisory work and corporate customer business.

Read more about career stories and employee experiences at Savings Banks Group.