How Finland is Reinventing the Return to Work Experience
Lessons from the happiest country on Earth
By Kati Vilkki
As a Finn, I tend to raise an eyebrow whenever my American colleagues talk about “returning to work.”
After all, haven’t we been working the entire time?
What people mostly mean, of course, when they discuss RTW, is what steps employers are taking to lure people back to their desks, from whimsical redecorating news to explicit orders to return or face career repercussions. The concept reveals the persistent beliefs business leaders hold about knowledge work — it’s still tied to a shared location and schedule.
In Finland, however, we have taken a different approach: trust.
Finland is a highly trust-based society. We were just named the happiest country in the world for the fourth consecutive year. The country’s well-being has been largely credited to our faith in both people and institutions.
During my 20+ years of working as a leader and a coach at Nokia, I asked countless leadership teams about how they react when someone tries to force them to do something. The answers invariably fell under four categories: fake, fight, ignore, or comply. People either pretend to follow the order, resist it, turn a blind eye…
