Teosto strives to promote equality and diversity among music authors. In 2022, one of the focus areas was promoting a more even gender distribution among Teosto members.

In 2022, 79% of Teosto’s individual members were male and only 21% were female.  Even though the share of women is slightly higher among new members, the share is still increasing too slowly.

At Teosto, we started looking for ways to solve the challenge together with 10 other music industry actors through a project that used a comprehensive survey to find out what obstacles and incentives there are when it comes to working as a composer or a lyricist and what kinds of obstacles especially women and non-binary people face when trying to enter the industry. The results of the survey were published in March 2023 and the project group will use the results to plan measures to promote a more even gender distribution among rightholders.

Also as an employer, promoting equality and diversity is one of our key goals. The responsibility for complying with the Equality Act lies with the employer, but the whole work community is responsible for behaving in ways that promote equality.

In Teosto’s equality plan, we have recorded principles to promote equality as well as measures to guarantee everyone a safe work environment that is free of discrimination. The achievement of equality is monitored by the cooperation group, which assesses the situation annually. We are also part of the Yhdenvertainen musiikkiala (“Non-discriminatory music industry”) project and are committed to its principles (see yhdenvertainenmusiikkiala.com/in-english).

Teosto’s gender distribution is quite even. In 2022, 43.1% (41.8% in 2021) of Teosto’s employees were male and 56.9% (58.2% in 2021) were female. Three out of nine management team members and three out of six board members were female.

The largest age group among Teosto employees is 55–59-year-olds. The average age of all Teosto employees in 2022 was 49.5 years (2021: 50.3 years)

Young People and Teosto is a new concept that we are using to provide opportunities to young people to learn more about Teosto and the world of work. The concept was created in late 2021 to meet the need to ensure the diversity of our staff with a work community made up of people of various ages and maintain continuity in terms of Teosto’s future labour needs. In 2022, we offered six young people the opportunity to learn more about Teosto and the world of work through various events and internships. The young people who worked at Teosto included both interns and summer job voucher employees. In addition, one TET trainee and one young person who worked in the Job Shadow project via Nuori Yrittäjyys ry also worked at Teosto.

We have built a hybrid work model for Teosto. The model’s vision is to make remote and in-person work equal, and the model is based on trust. According to the model, each employee may assess where they are best able to do their day’s work and reach their goals, allowing them to decide independently where they want to work. The model offers plenty of freedom but also guidelines regarding situations where employees should come to the office to work. Finding a good balance between in-person and remote work is essential in order to get the best of both.

The pilot phase of the Teosto hybrid work model ended in May 2022. We collected experiences of piloting the model, analysed the data and created a list of the necessary adjustments with which we wanted to improve the model. After the adjustments were made, the model became part of Teosto’s day-to-day work.  The premises were improved on the basis of the staff’s wishes and insights from the pilot phase, and the implementation was carried out together with staff in autumn 2022.

Teosto promotes its staff’s well-being at work and work ability with a long-term and systematic approach. The most important goal of our well-being at work activities is to maintain the good current state. We maintain the current state by carrying out proactive and preventive work ability activities, promoting open dialogue and systematically developing leadership and supervisory work.

We are assisted in this work by our occupational health partner Mehiläinen and the pension insurance company Ilmarinen. We offer our staff a wide range of occupational health care services and create a well-being at work plan annually. Our employees’ own actions to take care of their well-being are also supported by our active employees’ club HeKe and the vouchers offered as fringe benefits, which the employee can use for exercising, culture, a massage or commuting.

The employees’ club annually organises various events to maintain work ability. The goal of these events is to create and increase team spirit, improve the physical and mental well-being of staff and support strategic objectives related to staff.

In 2022, the greatest challenges to well-being at work were caused by occasional heavy workloads in both customer service and development. Well-being at work was increased through, for example, updating job descriptions and regular discussions between employees and supervisors where the employee’s situation was looked at and the necessary measures were taken to improve the situation. Streamed break exercise sessions were also carried out twice a week, in addition to jogging for staff and a culture-related well-being at work day. Staff also had access to the HeiaHeia app, which supports well-being and team spirit.

We measure our staff’s well-being and productivity with the Quality of Work Life (QWL) index. In the survey, our employees respond to 15 questions and use them to assess how the quality of work life is reflected in leadership, supervisory work, organisational culture, competence and processes. At the same time, the employee may offer suggestions for development for each thing they notice. The artificial intelligence included in the survey will calculate the risk of incapacity for work, turnover, sickness absence and burnout on the basis of the responses.

Our QWL index was good in 2022, amounting to 79.4% at the end of the year. The average is 60% for Finnish organisations and 58.2% for the state. The index increased by 3.8 percentage points compared to 2021, and positive development was seen in all areas of the measurement.

Our other well-being at work indicators are the number of sickness absence days as well as the number of disability pension decisions, occupational accidents and early support discussions. In 2022, the number of sickness absence days was 4.1 days per employee. In 2021, the number was 5.8. There were no disability pension cases or occupational accidents in 2022. Our long-term well-being at work management efforts are reflected in reduced expenses and sickness absences, better job satisfaction and better performance.

When it comes to leadership, our goal is to guide our actions towards a desirable culture and values as well as to motivate people on their own journey towards acting in line with their values. The principles of our supervisory work have been recorded in Esimiestyön käsikirja (“The Handbook of Supervisory Work”), which was authored by the supervisors themselves. Our Code of Conduct for supervisory work was also created by the supervisors. We regularly discuss key areas of supervisory work in training meetings for supervisors. The following six rules are clearly present in our everyday work and we measure how they are followed annually using a 360-degree supervisor feedback survey.

• Encounter others – see, listen, be present
• Trust others
• Enable others to reach their potential
• Don’t be afraid to speak up and intervene
• Build a “we” spirit across group boundaries
• Set clear goals together with others

According to the results of the 360-degree supervisor feedback survey, Teosto employees were more satisfied with the actions of their supervisors in 2022. Teosto employees think their supervisors are at their best when they are not afraid to speak up and intervene, have genuine encounters with others, are present and enable others to reach their potential. Supervisors’ ability to set clear goals and trust others improved noticeably compared to 2021. The only area that did not reach a score of 4 was building “we” spirit across group boundaries.

We also use the Quality of Work Life (QWL) index to collect information about leadership and supervisory work.  According to the results, our employees found the quality of supervisory work to be very good (index 84.6%) and the quality of leadership to be good (index 78.4%).

At Teosto, genuine interaction between supervisors and subordinates is important. In addition to personal 1-2-1 discussions, we also use three different dialogues for everyone.

• The goals discussion is a discussion between the supervisor and the subordinate about goals and performance. The discussion is held at the beginning of the year.
• The optional performance appraisal is a discussion with HR that focuses on the employee’s personal development, such as their competence and their career and training wishes.
• The purpose of the HR 1-2-1 discussion is to support every employee’s well-being and coping at work.

In 2022, we held discussions with all of our employees in line with our goals.

Our work at Teosto is becoming increasingly customer-oriented. Working as part of a network, working with partners and being international are key parts of the work. These themes are also emphasised in Teosto’s strategy, which outlines future competence needs.

One of our most important projects has been the strategy process, carried out in 2021–2022, which included the entire staff and which has developed our competence in many ways. Implementing the strategy significantly strengthens our competence – achieving each strategic objective increases the skills of both the responsible leaders and the employees involved in the project.

To meet future competence needs, we continued the activities of Teosto-Akatemia, launched in 2019, with the Teosto-Akatemia 2 course offering. Its goal is to agilely address the competence development needs that arise during the strategy period. Competence needs also arise as job descriptions are updated and performance appraisals are held.

As needs to increase the competence of current staff are identified at Teosto, we think about what kinds of training and development activities would be the most suitable for each situation. In 2022, the key training activities included the AsKo customer experience training for the entire organisation, the cross-training of customer service advisors, lobbying training and training for supervisors as part of the Esihenkilötreffit concept.

In Teosto-Akatemia 2, the learning solutions include online courses, reading lists, workshops and in-person coaching days. Teosto’s staff also took part in some external training events and seminars on current topics.

In late 2022, we launched the pilot phase of the Lupa Oppia! concept. The concept involves a two-hour working hours reservation for every employee, during which the employee is allowed to focus on learning about things they find interesting or important. During the pilot phase, various training and learning materials as well as ideas about subjects for study were spotlighted, and every employee was asked to report on what they used their time on and what they learnt. The pilot phase ended in February 2023, and the decision on continuing the concept will be made on the basis of analysing the results.