- February 14, 2016
Investing in employee well-being at work is not an easy task, but it is well worth the effort, especially when the motivation comes from a genuine desire to improve the employees’ lives.
At Great Place to Work award ceremony 2016, 3stepIT was officially recognised as being one of the best workplaces in Finland. What makes this award even more satisfying is that3 stepIT is the only company that has made it to the list every year for the past ten years.
The company CEO, Carmen Ene, accepted the award with pride, as improving job satisfaction takes endurance and one should not expect instant results. “We take our employees’ feedback as recognition for years of work,” she expressed with gratitude.
Carmen Ene became an executive at 3stepIT after years of international leadership roles at IBM. “I have managed several multinational teams in different cultures over the course of my career, but at 3stepIT, I see a team that has the versatility to react to fast changes in the marketplace.”
Trust as a guarantee for success
At the heart of how 3stepIT operates, a deep trust between the employees and the employer can be found. When the employees feel that they are trusted, they become more motivated about their work. “The employees’ trust can’t be won overnight. It takes continuous long-term development,” explains 3stepIT’s HR Manager Anni Järviaho.
“We don’t want to leave things only at the listening stage. We want to make an effort to develop our workplace based on the findings,” continues Järviaho. For example, a significant project, based on an employees’ initiative on renewing the way of working, was implemented across the past two years. To support this forward looking type of work, new facilities were built and renovated in a more domestic fashion to support the functionality based on the employees’ ideas. Remote working has also been made possible for most employees.
Employee satisfaction directly results in positive customer feedback
At 3stepIT, it is believed that service-oriented employees lead to satisfied customers. “Satisfied employees will go the extra mile to make customers happy. On the other hand, customer satisfaction is a strong foundation that a sales employee can lean on for confidence in both themselves and the product they are selling,” states Mika Karjalainen, Sales Director for 3stepIT's Finnish Business.
As a reward for successful customer service, 3stepIT's selling team was nominated as the Best Selling Organisation in Finland in 2015. Evaluation was mainly based on customer feedback, so there is good reason to be proud of the achievement.
The backgrounds of employees working at 3stepIT vary, but nevertheless, they share a similar task oriented and open minded attitude, aiming for constant improvement. When everyone in the organisation shares the same attitude and values, everyone can trust their colleague and work as a group in a positive manner. Team spirit was also evident during the ceremony: the award was accepted by a group of employees whom the working community had voted as being the best representation of the overall positive attitude at 3stepIT.