Hi Gail, Is work-life balance one of Nokia's core values? Or does it depend on the manager you have? Many thanks!

Hi! Thanks for your question. The health, safety and wellbeing of our people is our number one priority. We are focused on creating a working environment at Nokia where everyone has a good day at work.

And hopefully you’ve already seen that we kicked off 2022 with the launch of a bold new people strategy that puts Nokia’s people firmly at the heart of everything we do – with the focus on creating an environment in which people not only work, but thrive.

So yes, I would say that work-life balance is a priority at Nokia. We focus on promoting good mental health by prioritising prevention and creating a mentally healthy workplace by setting boundaries around how we work and communicate. Our programs support that by creating a platform which enable teams to have conversations about wellbeing and work-life balance in a structured, actionable way; discussing expectations and setting boundaries, while creating an environment where everyone takes an active role in influencing the way in which their team operates, on a day-to-day basis.

A key pillar in our wellbeing framework is “Manage” and this is about managing people in a way that recognises and supports positive wellbeing as being key to performance excellence – focusing on good leadership and proactive intervention – where wellbeing is embedded into all aspects of our people management practices, and people managers feel equipped to intervene early if they notice that someone needs support.

Wellbeing is inherent to our way of working and embedded in our leadership and culture frameworks to influence, inspire and support positive wellbeing at work, and is a key component of our regular manager-employee dialogs (1 in 90 Dialogs), to have open discussions about balancing work demands with time to rest and recharge, prioritizing how energy levels are managed, particularly during busy times and what can be done to better support in these areas.

Being open, fearless and empowered are cultural essentials for Nokia and as such, we encourage everyone to be open to exploring a more balanced way of doing things, fearless about asking for help if they need it and empowered to make good decisions about their wellbeing.

Another step to support work-life balance is the introduction of flexible working, offering more choice over where employees work, and for most, that means working from home more often than before which also helps to support overall wellbeing and work-life balance.