– These principles promote women's empowerment and gender equality in the workplace. This is important both in Finland and the wider world. By signing the WEPs, we promote this objective and send a signal to our stakeholders and operators in our global supply chains. In practice, gender equality means equal pay for equal work and zero tolerance of sexual harassment, notes SOK’s Executive Vice President of Human Resources, Susa Nikula.

The S Group is currently seeking ways to advance diversity and the experience of equality on a broad front, accommodating various perspectives.

– The implementation of gender equality is one of the development areas to which we as an employer want to commit. This is a very important issue in a female-dominated sector, and 78% of our employees are women. For example, it means that we offer more support to women seeking executive roles. Women have already been well represented among our managers for a long time, Susa Nikula explains.

To show our commitment to these principles, the S Group is participating in the WEPs Activator capacity-building programme, that was just launched in October 2020 and coordinated by UN Women and amfori, an organisation for the promotion and development of social responsibility within European enterprises.

– The programme and its network provide us with tools that help us address the gender perspective as an employer and in operations involving our supply chains. We also gain new perspectives on our human resources development and our work for sustainable and responsible business, as well as an opportunity to learn as an organisation. This helps us analyse our current situation, set concrete targets for ourselves and adjust our action programme to better implement equality, says Nina Elomaa, SOK’s Senior Vice President, Sustainability.