03.08.2021

Building Gasum together – six principles form the foundation of a strong corporate culture

Renewal is a key element of energy company Gasum’s strategy as the company moves purposefully and responsibly towards new opportunities. Gasum has operations in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Germany, and building a well-functioning Nordic gas ecosystem requires a strong corporate culture and good leadership.

“At Gasum, we have set out on a major journey of change. Our prominent position as the builder of a Nordic gas ecosystem requires us to commit to a modern, dialogical corporate culture. It’s important for us to integrate our management principles more strongly into our strategy, values and competence, and to ensure that these principles are shared across countries and businesses. Together, we aim to build a better corporate culture and leadership through leadership principles,” says Anja Kuparinen, Vice President, Human Resources and Safety at Gasum.

Leadership development is a common project for all of us. A work community survey helps us to examine issues relating to the Group’s corporate culture, leadership strengths and development needs. In short, our six leadership principles are closely linked to Gasum’s purpose to offer cleaner energy and to build a bridge towards a carbon-neutral society on land and at sea in a changing operating environment together with our partners.

Our six principles of leadership involve setting and reaching goals, solutions centricity, giving and receiving feedback, building trust, supporting colleagues and celebrating joint successes. Kuparinen thinks that trust and frank dialogue for the foundation for a well-functioning corporate culture:

"Each of us is responsible for building common trust and trust forms the foundation for how we develop the company and ourselves. In turn, frank dialogue based on trust enables constructive feedback.”

Building our corporate culture together

Our leadership principles can be seen across the Group in various personnel events, recruiting, coaching, onboarding and in development discussions, for example. The Management Team is tasked with ensuring that the principles are applied throughout business operations across the organization. The principles support and help managers to find the right ways of working and also allow intervention in situations when there are challenges in management.

Kuparinen points out that all Gasum employees have an important role in ensuring that the principles are applied.

"Managers have an important role in ensuring that the leadership principles are constantly discussed and that they are translated into concrete actions. However, all Gasum employees are responsible together for the type of corporate culture we are building. We have just started our journey and must work purposefully and responsibly to ensure that we act in line with the principles. The six leadership principles are an important element in the implementation of Gasum’s strategy and I believe that they will guide us together to successfully updating our company’s corporate culture.”