Strong support structures in place
for future growth and expansion

HR Report: Minna Tuomikoski

We have faced turbulent times in business during the past few years. That’s why it has been more important than ever to ensure the well-being and operational capabilities of our personnel around the globe. Also, maintaining our unique iLOQ culture through rapid growth has been a high priority.

Still growing in numbers

As iLOQ continues to grow, expand internationally and shift towards a more regionally led organization, it is important for HR to protect the integrity of the unique company culture that we typically call our iLOQ family. Again, during the past year, our overall headcount has grown by some tens of people and by the end of the financial year, our headcount amounted to 342 professionals around the world. In 2024, our new iLOQ location included Singapore and we also grew the global HR team, now consisting of six professionals.

Developing our sales and leadership

With the kind of growth we have seen over the past decade or so, even if the last two years have been somewhat slower, maintaining the quality of management and sales functions across a global corporation has remained on our radar. Especially with decision-making moving more and more into regional and local operations, ensuring the same high standards across the board is absolutely vital. In terms of sales, we made major adjustments to our sales incentive scheme to reflect the growing importance of software sales compared to the more traditional product-based sales of locking systems.

This past year also saw us continuing our comprehensive leadership training program with great engagement and encouraging results. The program had our participants critically evaluate themselves in terms of leadership competence, style and skillsets. We wanted to investigate how our value-based leadership principles are reflected in everyday work. The results were generally positive, and everyone had the chance to receive more detailed personal feedback and coaching. Additional peer-to-peer support was on the agenda when all our leaders had the chance to come together to meet their international counterparts as part of the training at Haikko Manor in Finland.

Unique culture stays strong

We also carried out iLOQ culture survey, taking key findings into account in the leadership trainings mentioned previously, placing emphasis on transparency in communications and efficiency in cross-organizational collaboration to name a few. As we continue to grow and expand internationally, we must ensure that the unique culture that defines us is embedded consistently across our entire organization.

As we have seen most years, again in 2024 our unique iLOQ family spirit and open and encouraging working environment continued to receive praise internally. Face-to-face events such as the annual iLOQ Days in Oulu, Finland continue to provide us with the opportunity to deploy the iLOQ culture into our country organizations and give it the context it needs to thrive.

Appreciating our greatest assets

At iLOQ, we have always believed that our people are our greatest asset. Challenging times, like the ones we have been enduring lately, prove the point. Thanks to the resilience, strength and unity of the iLOQ family, we continue to push forward and, by climbing the obstacles placed in our way, we continue to reach new heights together.

“With growth and international expansion
comes the need for
unified management training and
more rigid HR support structures.”

Strengthening supporting structures

With growth and international expansion also comes the need for more rigid support structures. In 2024, we took on the task of building a global HR platform for iLOQ. This strategic project involved the evaluation of modern global solution providers and selecting the right partner to support our international growth. During the end of 2024, we began the comprehensive implementation of the new global HR system to ensure a successful start to 2025 with its launch. The new global HR system is something that will grow and evolve hand-in-hand with our strategy, operations and process development.

Our modern HR solutions for all iLOQ employees include everything from recruitment processes to pre-boarding, on-boarding, employee engagement and even the ultimate off-boarding one day. They will smooth out the path for new employees, provide tools and support for management and provide comprehensive data for decision making. In addition, to constantly build the employee experience at iLOQ, we want everyone to have the opportunity to provide feedback or raise important questions within our platforms. They are valuable channels where we can spread and maintain that famous iLOQ family spirit that comes up every year as a key topic in our staff discussions and surveys. 

Continuing to promote transparency

During 2024, we also continued with our quest for documented transparency and fairness across our organization. The HR-led project related to the transparency of our remuneration policy continued as planned from 2023. The past year included a holistic compensation assessment in different functions across iLOQ and in comparison, to external benchmarking data. This data has allowed us to ensure that we are compensating our staff fairly across the organization and competitively enough against an industry average to ensure we stay desirable to our current staff and future recruits alike.

In addition to our various compensation elements, we currently offer different benefits to the personnel in order to promote healthy lifestyles, support comprehensive wellbeing and reward our personnel. Our offered benefits vary depending on location, but we do not distinguish between employment types in eligibility for benefits in our significant locations of operation due to applicable legislation and our commitment towards equality.

This is an on-going project that needs to be continued, maintained, developed and updated on a regular basis. Maintaining a fair and competitive compensation will help us maintain our desirability and edge in the future. During the next phase of the project, all data will be compiled and the findings communicated to the staff taking us one step further in remuneration transparency.