– Staff with a variety of backgrounds represents a clear asset, as it provides us with more innovation and creativity. This increases customer satisfaction, and diversity also makes us more profitable. Simply put, it makes us a better company. The FM sector gives us more opportunities than most to employ newcomers and other people that would otherwise be excluded from the labor market. We’re often able to offer them their first job and we’re proud of that, Magdalena Öhrn, Communications Director at Coor, explains.
Your first job in a new country is much more than just a workplace. It provides you with a context and a sense of belonging, which is incredibly important. At Coor we have an inclusive corporate culture and we want all of our 11,000 employees to feel that they can be themselves and be respected.
– We give our staff the tools they need, and we help them to integrate into society in a range of ways, including internal language classes and training programs. We’re rewarded for this because diversity is important to Coor’s employer brand, for existing and potential staff alike. Everyone wants to work at a company where you can be proud of the corporate culture, Magdalena Öhrn explains.
Coor’s diversity and integration work goes beyond just the company’s employees. The ambition is to give something back to the communities where Coor has operations by facilitating integration and providing support to those that need it. Examples of this include helping children in deprived areas with homework, mentorship programs for non-native entrepreneurs in deprived areas and various collaborations with municipalities that help more people enter the labor market.
– A large company like Coor has a responsibility: it’s important that companies like us offer people a foot in the door to the labor market, but we can become even better at it. Diversity will only become more important and is something that we need to take into consideration when recruiting new managers, for example. We have a large number of employees and over the coming years we plan to grow even further. Coor needs to attract, retain and recruit people—and this is where integration and diversity play a key role, Magdalena Öhrn concludes.