The Best Ideas Are Born in a Diverse Environment
Blog by Jatta Kupias
Finland has got a new government, and one of its main tasks will again be, how to create more jobs: how to ensure that there will be enough work force to take care of the growing number of non-working people. Today’s low birth rates, combined with the increasing life expectancy are not helping the situation. This is, naturally, not only a Finnish problem, but the same trend is seen also elsewhere.
IT IS DIFFICULT to control over the fertility but the careers could, however, be prolonged. Many people would also like to stay longer at work but the situation is complicated: there does not seem to be many work places for elder people.
Very often it is a question of the attitude. When a company is making redundancies, it is easier to let senior people go as “they have already settled their lives and are entitled to retire through governmental allowance”. This makes some sense: the young people need experience and money – to get then along without the work when they are old, sarcastically saying.
However, far not all people over 50 are ready to start waiting for the retirement, and honestly, not many can afford that, either. And why would they – or the society – through away their know-how and experience?
ONE OF THE VALUES of SmartWorkPlaza is Courage – we do things in a new, different way. Because the values cannot be only empty words it is marvelous to realize that the company lives as it says. The business center workers come from all age groups and backgrounds. The oldest is around sixty, the youngest is a trainee from the university, who wants to gain working experience. There are plenty of nationalities, and though the languages sometimes form a mess, the common language is always found -when there is will, there are no obstacles. And will is something we really have in this place!
Just working in a co-working center needs some courage courage – readiness to be available for others. This may not be the most comfortable situation for us, shy Finns. Privacy can be found in the telephone booth, otherwise you are a part of a community all the time. It is, however much easier to be brave and take the chances in a group, because a shared experiment can be less scary than working alone. In here, a younger gets support from the older, and the other way around.
In its earlier days, Nokia was searching for THE killer cocktail of applications and services to conquer the telecoms world. Combining the expertise and working together may lead to top innovations, planned or not. The non-evident and unlike ideas, that can blow your business sky high, are born in diverse teams.
THERE IS a female majority in Finland’s new government. At anno domini 2019 it is still and issue worth mentioning, because the situation is new. Normally, we are used to seeing that the decision makers are men.
Finland has had a woman as a president, as well as a bishop and in many other responsible offices. The top positions in the business no longer belong to men only.
And, by the way, this phenomenon is seen also in SmartWorkPlaza: for the time being, there are female specialists on every level on the organization – and the members are also men and women, young and old, completely equally and in harmony.