FotoWare didn’t win the ODA Award, but we won anyway.

We spend most of our time at work, and our days are filled with tasks, thoughts, strategies, urgencies, and much more. What position or title you have does not always reflect the work quality you do, but your work environment does.

According to State of the Global Work Place analysis, 85% of people are not engaged at work, most people are actually actively disengaged.
The work environment is more important than we might reflect upon in our daily lives, but it effects both the company and the people who work there. For those people who are coming to work feeling disengaged or just not engaged, what kind of work are they getting done? And what will it take to have an actively engaged workforce?

I think most of us want to be part of a positive, inclusive and purpose-filled work environment. And since our colleagues are the people that we spend more time with than even our own chosen friends, and sometimes family, we owe it to ourselves to have colleagues that make us feel good. Getting actively engaged employees means that leadership needs to be engaging, and that everybody must be able to understand their purpose in the company. Diversity plays a big role in this.

Every year the ODA organization give the ODA award to a company that work to improve and preserve gender balance in the IT industry, and that is a role model to other companies to increase their gender balance too.
FotoWare was one of three finalists this year for our work in increasing gender balance and cultural balance. Within the company we increased our numbers with more than net 20% in the last 15 months. The reason we can achieve such numbers in such short time, is that our employees are actively engaged in the topic – not just HR, not just the women, not just the leaders, but everybody. We all want to come to work every day and make a difference in the lives of our customers, and to be able to continue to innovate and to do what we think will give our customers an advantage when they are using our products. To do that we need the best people, that can do their best work, ask the most challenging questions, challenge the status quo, break with tradition and most of all: make their fellow colleagues great along the way. In FotoWare we have exactly those people.

We didn’t win the ODA award; DNB deservedly won for their work on increased gender balance initiatives, and also for setting requirements to their own vendors and partners to get better gender balance in their organizations.
But we won anyway because our company consist of smart, caring, responsible, hardworking, passionate, accountable, innovative, unique women and men who make a difference at work every day. People that support each other, cheer for each other and want to succeed together.

I have the privilege to work in an environment like FotoWare – we have already won.