It’s not surprising, then, that open communication, teamwork and, perhaps above all else, employee well-being are top priorities for Framery, the company’s headquartered manufacturing company. Headquartered in Tampere, Finland, the company builds soundproof booths for office spaces.
Ani Harira, the company’s head of people and culture, strives to ensure employees feel happy and fulfilled at work.
She says that she and her team use some common Finnish phrases to help create an environment where employees can thrive at work.
Finnish workplaces tend to have flat hierarchical structures, and individual employees feel as empowered to voice their opinions about the business as they are with the CEO and other senior leaders.
This phrase reinforces this idea and shows how a trusting environment where people can freely share their opinions benefits the entire organization.
You need people at all levels of the organization to raise issues and find solutions, as Khalila explains: “Having an open line of communication where anyone can ask questions, whether it’s the CEO or anyone else in the company, paves the way for progress.”
Framery employees are encouraged to speak up about the issues they are working on, as well as company-wide goals.
“I can ask whatever questions I need to be successful in my role, and I can ask questions for the company,” Khalila said. “So even if it’s not my job, if I see an issue that needs to be addressed, I have a responsibility as a company to ask questions so we don’t get off track.”
In other words, work smarter, not harder.
Leaders are encouraged to help employees work with this mindset, Khalila said, and managers need to clarify and manage expectations. Free your employees to focus on your most important business priorities.
“You can just keep working, but I doubt it will actually produce results,” she says.
The end goal is often to help meet both business needs and do so in a manageable way.
“It’s not about being lazy,” Khalila says, “it’s about being smart about what you focus on and, in some ways, doing less work and having a healthy work-life balance.”
Khalila said the phrase is used in a similar way to “addressing the elephant in the room” – addressing the business issues at hand rather than leaving them unaddressed.
“It’s about believing in the workplace culture that cat issues need to be on the agenda, and that people can trust each other and openly discuss any issues,” she says.
Put more simply, “we believe things can be resolved by talking,” she added.
Conversely, this phrase suggests that leaving a problem unattended will only create problems later.
“If you let a problem go unchecked, it’s going to show up in front of you,” Khalila said, “so the only way to deal with it is to actually deal with it when it shows up.”
The phrase is a visual representation of what happens when you don’t plan ahead or think about the consequences of certain business decisions, Khalila says.
“If you don’t plan what you’re going to do, you’re going to end up back in the tree first and hurting yourself, instead of actually planning ahead and being smart about what you want to accomplish,” she says.
In Finnish workplaces, she adds, these conversations often involve people at all levels of the organization. A company’s strategic plan ensures that “people feel that their opinions are heard, that they have a say in our strategy, and at least understand what the strategy is.”
“It’s good to plan wisely. [in a way] It’s about respecting other people’s time as well,” she added.
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