Workplace trends

Digia is taking multi-location, flexible work to the next level

Digia is a software and service company that helps its customers renew themselves in the networked world. With more than 1300 employees, Digia has 8 offices in Finland, and one office in Stockholm, Sweden.

Development is guided by strong corporate culture and a vision of future work

Digia has been actively developing its corporate culture, and the principles of the culture jointly defined in 2019 reflect the values of Digia employees in a personal way. “Every Digia employee is a senior trainee” and “Feel the burn” serve as examples of the culture of getting things done and of a positive culture of learning and experimenting. In addition, in the Future of Work project launched at the beginning of 2021, preparations have been made for post-Covid-19 working life by taking multi-location and flexible working life to the next level.

The project has four cornerstones: premises, tools, daily practices and efficient use of data to support work. Jussi Piispanen, Head of Next Level Office, who leads the project says: “One of the aims of the project has been to turn the Digia campus into a network of offices, home offices, and other remote locations where people have the freedom to choose the location for their work that suits each situation and task. In addition to smooth and flexible work, the new kind of working is naturally also evaluated from the perspective of customer needs and supporting team work.”

High-quality home office enables flexibility

As part of the development work, a decision was made among the Digia employees to conduct a survey to find out where each employee would primarily like to work, at the office or remotely. Remote work was an established part of work at Digia already before the pandemic, and 67% of the respondents said that they would primarily like to work remotely, which means 3 to 5 days a week. A decision was made at Digia to ensure that home offices are functional and to give the employees the opportunity to choose a desk and a task chair of their liking from selected Martela products. Practicality, ergonomics and aesthetics were highlighted as the most important criteria for the remote workstation. Digia has acquired remote workstations using the flexible Workplace as a Service model, in which the company pays a monthly service fee instead of purchasing the furniture. It is easy to change the amount of furniture, and furniture that is no longer needed is responsibly delivered for the next users after maintenance. Deliveries of the home office furniture started towards the end of 2021, and more than 500 electrically adjustable desks have already been delivered to home offices.

Pasi Tontti, Senior Manager, who ordered furniture for his home office, says: “I have now been using the electrically adjustable desk and task chair that Martela delivered straight to my home for some months now. From the very beginning, I fell into the habit of standing during Teams meetings. After using the furniture for a couple of weeks, I realised that my back no longer felt tired after a working day. The new ergonomic task chair provides much better support while sitting than the previous one, and standing is a welcome change during the day. It’s great that such great furniture has been acquired for the use of the whole personnel!”

Placing emphasis on employee experience shows in the results

During the pandemic, in addition to home offices, Digia focused comprehensively on employee wellbeing, and surveys conducted among the employees show that the company has been doing the right things. Based on a survey on the meaningfulness of work and employee experience, the freedom to work independently of time and place is being implemented successfully, and the survey results have been improving over the last couple of years. The development activities will continue, and through active monitoring of the results and involvement of the employees, future work will evolve in an agile way.