OP Financial Group has been ranked as Finland’s most attractive employer among business-sector professionals in Universum’s annual survey. We were also rated highly by IT professionals, rising to fourth place behind the international tech giants.

OP Financial Group has been doing extremely well in the survey for several years. The latest survey ranked Finland’s best places to work among professionals. This year, we improved on last year’s ‘silver medal’, going one better among business-sector professionals and achieving record results in other categories.

“One of our strategic priorities over the years has been highly skilled, motivated and thriving personnel. I’m delighted by these results and feel that they strongly reflect the good, long-term work we’ve done at OP Financial Group. We have systematically created a culture that empowers our employees on the basis of self-managed teams.  The aim is to bring out the best in every single OP employee, enabling them to learn new things. We’ve also encouraged our staff to communicate openly about their work and everyday issues,” says Chief People and Culture Officer, Hannakaisa Länsisalmi, expressing her happiness with the results. 

In response to Universum’s survey, respondents stated which employers they found most attractive and what they valued most in them. According to this year’s survey, they consider a competitive starting salary, flexible working conditions, diverse tasks and appreciation of staff to be the key qualities of their ideal employer.

We joined the top performers according to IT professionals

In the IT professionals category, we rose to fourth from last year’s seventh place. This is an outstanding result behind the international tech giants.

As well as top rankings in the business and IT-sectors, we managed to make a big leap forward among respondents in the humanities, jumping from 24 to number 12. 

“Our employer image – as a genuinely participative workplace based on high-level competencies – is critical to retaining our current talent and recruiting the best. Looking ahead, it’s important that international high-performers, too, view us as an interesting and attractive employer,” says Tommi Korhonen, Lead of the Career tribe.

Recently, we have also stepped up our focus on diversity. Varied backgrounds, in terms of education and work experience, are highly valued as an organisational success factor.

“Finnish companies and society still have much to do in enhancing diversity. A key aspect of this is raising awareness of workplace diversity and recruiting employees from a range of backgrounds. In addition, due to the financial sector’s needs and opportunities across skill areas, it must attract talent in multiple sectors. This makes me particularly glad that our research results have improved so dramatically in IT and the Humanities,” adds Hannakaisa Länsisalmi.

The Universum survey is conducted twice a year. One survey focuses on professionals in various sectors and the other on students in higher education. Universum publishes similar survey results in 20 countries. In Finland, a total of 8,605 professionals responded to the survey in October–June.