Neste : This year Neste employees can donate working time for a good cause

In December 2017, Neste's Hannele Jakosuo-Jansson, SVP, Human Resources and Safety and Lars Peter Lindfors, SVP, Technology helped prepare cakes for the Salvation Army's Christmas concert.

Over the years, Neste employees have engaged in local charity work or otherwise positively contributed to the surrounding society. Such affectionate charity work can be comprised of for example helping the elderly, children and teens, or those in danger of becoming marginalized. In 2018, exciting new steps are taken as for the first time Neste employees are encouraged to engage in these thoughtful activities in a structured manner.

'Being an exemplary corporate citizen and contributing to the society are important to us here at Neste. We make donations to our local schools, many committed youth organizations, sports clubs, and various different good causes each year. We also make annual donations to charity and engage in sponsorships at the corporate level. As we are celebrating Neste's 70th birthday this year, we thought we could do even more in the area of societal engagement. This is why we are offering our active and compassionate employees the opportunity to dedicate half of their working day to voluntary work. Regardless of the nature of our employee's duties everyone is given an opportunity to contribute in one way or another,' explains Hannele Jakosuo-Jansson, SVP, Human Resources and Safety at Neste.

Neste employees, independently or in teams, are given the chance to choose exactly how they want to spend their valuable time and where they want to do voluntary work. The criteria being that voluntary work is in line with Neste's values and done for an organization doing good in the local community or society. Employees are advised, for example, not to engage in any high-risk work, or work for political parties or religious movements.

In order to get a sense of the overall positive impact, Neste aims to track how many working hours its employees donated, and how many charities or causes were involved in a year.

'If our collaborative charity work is a success, who knows, perhaps we could continue this as a proud annual tradition at Neste' Jakosuo-Jansson adds.

At the end of 2017, Neste's executive team members donated their working time to charities working with children and the less fortunate. The executive team members gladly helped out in ways the charities found most useful.

'Our General Counsel Christian Ståhlberg and I helped assemble furniture at one of the houses of SOS Children's Villages in Finland. Other management team members also earnestly helped out at Myllypuro food bank and the Finnish Salvation Army,' explains Simo Honkanen, SVP, Sustainability and Public Affairs at Neste.

Feelings of empathy and compassion were obvious at the jobs our participants had the privilege of doing. 'People queued several hours in cold rain as they waited for their turn to receive free food supplies. Their thankfulness for what they received was touching,' says Neste's Osmo Kammonen, Senior Vice President, Communications and Brand Marketing who helped the workers of Myllypuro Elintarvikeapu in Finland by distributing food supplies.

Follow #NesteLife on Twitter or Instagram during 2018 to get glimpses of Neste employees' voluntary work experiences, among other things.

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