“We are convinced that our success depends on diversity and equality. To fulfil our mission to empower people in their daily lives, we need a workforce that represents all the users we serve,” says Britt Nilsen, Head of Sustainability at Schibsted.
Schibsted is committed to incorporating values of diversity and inclusion in every aspect of the company. “We want people at Schibsted to challenge the ordinary, find good ideas and achieve great things. To achieve this, we depend on a workforce with a diverse mindset, contributing with different experiences, backgrounds and perspectives. This is a continuous journey where we aim to be ambitious and we still have a way to go in many parts of our organization, ” Nilsen adds.
Leading the way: The Schibsted distribution team (SDI)
A good example of a team that has created a well-balanced, diverse workforce is the Schibsted Distribution East team (SDI Øst). This team consists of approximately nine hundred and fifty employees from seventy different nationalities. More than fifty percent of the workforce has foreign citizenship. Poland, Ghana and Lithuania are the most represented nationalities after Norway, while fifteen countries have more than ten employees represented.
“Equality in working life is important to us, and we are very happy to have achieved such a strong diversity in our working group. The key to creating this diversity is simply: Where you come from does not matter when we get an application, and this has created a wide group of ethnicity in our workforce,” says CEO of Schibsted Distribution Cathrine Laksfoss.
“Diversity gives us a broader perspective, and as a service company, we want to mirror the customers we meet – which is one of many positive consequences of having such a diverse workforce. That said, we still have a lot we can do better, and we will continue to work on this together with the Schibsted Group as a whole,” Laksfoss adds.
Zero-tolerance
Schibsted has zero-tolerance for harassment of any kind, as clearly stated in our Code of Conduct and in our Discrimination, Bullying and Harassment Policy. This includes all forms of verbal, digital or physical harassment. Our Code of Conduct includes a whistle-blowing function that enables anonymous reporting on misconduct, breaches or potential violations.
In addition to an unconscious bias training for employees, we also have algorithmic bias training to make ourselves aware of the biases we might have in our product development.