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ENThe employer’s and the work community’s attitude towards parental leave is of great importance
“Parental leave was definitely a good experience. It was great to be involved in my child’s days and to follow their development in other ways than just in the evenings after work,” Mikko Aarnio says. He has been on parental leave with all three of his children, most recently in the summer of 2023.
Aarnio feels that the planning of parental leave and taking time off went well. He works on the development of Digia’s own product and in several customer projects, so there is no “good time” to take time off, but by discussing the matter with project managers, suitable substitute arrangements were found. The work community also had a positive attitude towards parental leave.
“It really matters how the employer and the work community view parental leave. Longer leave always causes some extra work and hassle, for example, due to substitute arrangements. At Digia, my supervisors have always been supportive of my leaves,” Aarnio describes.
Aarnio feels that Digia’s collective agreements longer paid parental leaves are a good improvement compared to the general collective agreement in the industry.
"Although it is only six additional days, it shows that Digia is willing to support families with children and promote equal opportunities in working life. I believe that this encourages people to take more parental leave. Encouraging attitude and flexibility in combining work and family life is undoubtedly an important factor for well-being at work,” Aarnio describes.
Digia’s collective agreement is one of the actions to ensure the well-being of employees
Several IT companies have made their own collective agreements recently. Digia also negotiated its own collective agreement in the spring of 2023, first with the trust position representing the personnel and then with the employee unions. The background was the general collective agreement for information technology services previously followed at Digia.
“We challenged ourselves to think through the kind of culture we want to build from the perspective of the collective agreement, what kind of working conditions work for us, and how we support both the company’s profitable growth and a functional employee experience for Digians,” says Pia Huhdanmäki, Senior Vice President, HR, Culture, and Responsibility.
Digia’s collective agreement considers equality, longer parental leaves than usual, and, for example, that women can take paid leave to participate in voluntary military service call-ups in the future. Paid leave is also available for certain family events, such as crises and celebrations.
“Culture lives and develops through everyday small actions. The flexibility agreed upon in the collective agreement is one part of these everyday actions,” Huhdanmäki says.
As part of the collective agreement package, a salary solution was also agreed upon for 2023-2024. A new, partly profitability-linked model has been introduced in the salary solution. Its main idea is that the company’s success benefits all Digians.
“The collective agreement supports our personnel strategy and is one of the actions to ensure the well-being of employees. We offer our personnel a flexible hybrid model of remote and on-site work, extensive flexibility in working hours, and the opportunity to accumulate leave for longer vacations, among other things. Well-being and the Digia community have also been invested in in many ways, such as diverse cultural and sports benefits, hobby clubs, and comprehensive dental and specialized health care services,” Huhdanmäki describes.
Read Digia’s collective agreement (in Finnish) from the downloadable PDF-file.