Nokia has announced that it is strengthening its flexible working practices following the pandemic.
The updated guidelines, which apply to all Nokia employees and are planned to come into effect 1 January 2022, will 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. Nokia’s existing Covid-19 work from home policy remains in effect globally until the end of 2021.
The guidelines have been created based on learnings from COVID-19 experiences, direct feedback from Nokia employees and to ensure that company ways of working reflect Nokia’s open, fearless and empowered cultural essentials. Feedback from employees was captured through a company-wide survey, conducted at the end of 2020, to guide Nokia’s post-pandemic planning. Roughly 26,000 Nokia employees responded to the survey about working preferences post pandemic, 91 per cent of whom felt they had retained or increased their productivity during their time working from home.
In addition to strengthening flexible working practices, Nokia plans to rethink and redesign office spaces to better reflect post-pandemic working arrangements and support collaboration. The move to a new hybrid model and refurbishments of offices will proceed on a country-by-country basis, taking into consideration local needs, legal requirements and the COVID-19 situation.
Pekka Lundmark, president and CEO of Nokia said: ‘The pandemic forced organisations to change. Technology gave people the tools to innovate. In many cases, the results have been too good to go back to the old way of doing things. While flexibility and respect have always been at the heart of Nokia, we want to give all our people even greater choice and flexibility over their work, so we are accelerating our transition to become a fully hybrid global workplace. Some people will choose to work more from home, others will choose mainly to work in offices redesigned to offer more collaborative spaces, and in other places we will secure the right facilities as and when required. This will be a country-by-country process and we will learn and refine as we go.’
