Solita has understood that supporting employees with their personal dreams and passion projects adds to their wellbeing and engagement. Work doesn’t have to be your one and only priority, but there is also space for other things and values in life. Flexible working culture made it possible for us to work from abroad during the winter, and it has made it easier to have balance in life.
We’ve worked at Solita since early summer 2021, and we are delighted by the level of flexibility Solita has offered. The pandemic has made remote working a new normal, and, in our case, we’ve also been able to leverage this opportunity by working from abroad during this winter. Eveliina worked from Spain, and Emmi had her remote office in Denmark.
Eveliina works as a project manager in the Cloud Platform Community and lives in Joensuu. Solita has a “light office” in Joensuu; it’s a space in a Coworking Forum at the Science Park in town. It offers great office facilities for 10 people working in the region, even though it’s not an official Solita site.
Emmi is a low-code developer finalising her master thesis in collaboration with Solita. She lives currently in Helsinki, but she’s thought about moving to Copenhagen for a while. This winter, she had an opportunity to live there for a month and get first-hand experience of the quality of life there.
We were impressed by how smoothly the process went when we brought up our desire to work from abroad. Our team leads were supportive and made an effort to find out how that could work out. Due to Finnish tax regulations, one month was the maximum time to work from another country, but it was sufficient for both of us. Eveliina was escaping the winter, and Emmi was exploring her potential future hometown.
We took a week off to enjoy some vacation time; otherwise, we worked normally. Eveliina worked part-time during that month, three days a week. Also, this arrangement was supported by Solita. Eveliina’s team lead made sure that there was less work for her to do during that period.
It was great to see how supportive everyone was of these arrangements. Sometimes we are our own worst critics and scared of what people will think if we want to work from another country or decrease our work hours. At Solita, we’ve only experienced encouragement to follow our dreams and do what’s best for us.
Trust is the prerequisite to freedom and flexibility
Flexibility and freedom are not limited to work location at Solita, but apply to many things. We are responsible for managing our time and calendars. It means we can run personal errands during the day, as long as work gets done. Freedom comes with responsibility; Solita trusts that we are the best experts to know how our work gets done in the best possible way. Location or the time of the day doesn’t play a huge role here. If we are accountable and do what is agreed upon, we have plenty of freedom to organise our work.
The culture here is also very humane and caring, taking flexibility to another level. If someone has, for example, sleeping problems or doesn’t feel well for other reasons, it’s ok to take days off. No one expects you to show up at work sick or push hard if you need to rest. When life happens, work is flexible. Well-being, both physical and mental, is highly valued in this company.
That is important because we can’t control life – situations change all the time. People at Solita also understand that work might not be the one and only priority in life, and people have dreams and responsibilities also outside of work. Someone has family responsibilities; someone else has passion projects. People here have space to reach their dreams, and personal life is appreciated in the work culture.
That being said, we also have the responsibility to make sure that things get done in time and with good quality. It means that we are also flexible when the situation requires that. Sometimes we work in the evening or do longer days. People are accountable and want to do their job well. Flexibility goes both ways.
