Multiculturalism as an Asset in Finnish Working Life

Finnish working life is becoming more diverse at a fast pace. The number of foreign-background employees in Finland has grown significantly in recent years, and in many sectors labour shortages have made international talent essential rather than optional. This shift still raises concerns and doubts in many workplaces, but international research offers strong support for the view that well-managed diversity is a competitive advantage for organisations, not a risk.

What research says about diversity and organisational performance

McKinsey's long-running, decade-spanning tracking study is one of the most extensive analyses on this topic. In its most recent report, covering more than a thousand companies across 23 countries, organisations in the top quartile of ethnic representation were 39 percent more likely to financially outperform organisations in the bottom quartile. The pattern is similar for gender diversity: companies in the top quartile of board gender diversity were 27 percent more likely to outperform financially than those in the bottom quartile, and for ethnically diverse boards the equivalent figure was 13 percent.

Another widely cited study comes from Boston Consulting Group (BCG), which examined the link between management team diversity and innovation capacity. The study found that companies with above-average diversity on their management teams reported innovation revenue that was 19 percentage points higher than companies with below-average leadership diversity. The result was statistically significant: the study's key finding was a strong, statistically significant correlation between the diversity of management teams and a company's overall innovation performance. Of the diversity dimensions examined, national origin, career and industry background, and gender balance emerged as the most meaningful factors.

It is worth noting, however, that the link between diversity and financial performance should not be read as a straightforward causal relationship. Some researchers have specifically questioned the interpretation of McKinsey's findings: academic critics argue that McKinsey's reports do not support the claim that large US public companies can, on average, expect to improve their financial performance simply by increasing the ethnic diversity of their executives, either in terms of the direction of causality or the underlying data. This does not disprove the benefits of diversity, but it is a reminder that improving diversity statistics alone is not enough. What matters is how diversity is actually managed and whether genuinely different perspectives are allowed to shape decision-making.

Why diversity tends to produce better results

The research literature points to a few recurring explanations for why diverse teams often perform better:

• A wider range of perspectives. Different cultural backgrounds, educational paths and life experiences bring more ways of approaching problems to the table, reducing the risk of groupthink and improving the quality of decisions.
• A better ability to serve diverse customers and international markets. When a workforce reflects the diversity of its customer base, the organisation understands the needs of different customer groups more effectively.
• Stronger innovation capacity. According to BCG's research, diversity at the management level in particular correlates with revenue from new products and services; new ideas tend to emerge more often when a team includes different ways of thinking.
• A faster ability to respond to a changing environment.A more varied set of backgrounds expands an organisation's collective knowledge base and networks, helping it spot changes and opportunities earlier.

Finnish working life in transition

The trend in Finland is concrete. In 2021, almost 390,000 people with a foreign background who were born outside Finland were living in the country, and as employees from different cultural backgrounds join the workforce, working life is becoming more diverse. At the same time, labour shortages in many sectors have made international expertise increasingly important: labour shortages in many fields have increased the need for international professionals, and workplaces are expected to become even more diverse in the future.

Domestic research nonetheless shows that potential is still going unused. According to Statistics Finland, the skills of immigrants are not yet being sufficiently utilised in Finnish working life, even though building on that expertise could bring genuinely new capabilities into an organisation. Attitudes also appear somewhat inconsistent: in one Finnish study surveying companies, 80 percent of respondents considered their own workplace fairly open to multiculturalism, but only 32 percent considered it a good thing to have colleagues from other cultural backgrounds represented at their workplace, a sign that positive attitudes at the level of principle do not always carry through into practice.

This is not only a Finnish phenomenon, but it is especially relevant right now. A research project funded by the Finnish Work Environment Fund, due to be completed in November 2025, looks specifically at how workplace-level measures can support the adjustment of immigrants into workplaces, and what measures should be adopted as Finnish working life becomes increasingly multilingual and multicultural. A key finding of the project is that adjustment is understood as a two-way process: responsibility does not lie solely with the employee with an immigrant background, but also with the rest of the workplace community.

What this means for organisations in practice

The research evidence points to one clear message: diversity alone does not automatically produce better results. The benefit comes from how diversity is managed. In practice, this means, for example:

1. Structured onboarding and support. Language mentoring, plain-language instructions and clear induction practices lower the threshold for becoming part of a work community.
2. Genuine inclusion, not just representation. The perspectives of people from different backgrounds need to actually influence decision-making; diversity in headcount alone is not enough.
3. Developing supervisors' capabilities. Cross-cultural communication and leadership are learnable skills worth investing in systematically.
4. Recognising discrimination and bias. Open discussion of challenges, rather than silence about them, is a precondition for diversity to become a genuine asset.

In conclusion

International research evidence gives fairly strong support to the view that diverse organisations are, on average, more innovative and often more financially successful than homogeneous ones, even though the precise nature of the causal relationship remains a matter of academic debate. In Finnish working life, this shift is already under way, driven by labour shortages and internationalisation. Whether a Finnish organisation actually benefits from this shift ultimately depends less on how diverse its workforce looks on paper, and more on how that diversity is led, supported and put to use in everyday practice.