Trust Capital and Decision-Making Ability as Cornerstones

There is one specific occasion that has had a significant effect on my thinking. As a young engineer I had just started as a manager in the Porvoo surface treatment department at Ensto. The company founder Ensio Miettinen came to me and asked how many people work in the metal department. I answered that there were 100 blue-collar and 10 white-collar workers. Ensio looked at me and said:” Here at Ensto we do not categorize people – we just have employees”. That is when I learned that every person is equally important, regardless of their position, and quickly corrected my answer to 110 employees.

People Always Come First

I started at Ensto in 1988 as a 14-year-old summer worker and have since 1998 been in permanent employment in many positions in several departments; longest within the production. Even though I have wide experience in a variety of operations related functions, my strongest driver has always been to work with people – not with machines, numbers, or matters. The last mentioned are naturally important but people always come first. My career started in surface treatment and the biggest leap was maybe in 2015 when I joined the Ensto Management Team and took the overall responsibility of the company Operations. Since April 2022 I oversee the Overhead Line business, too.

Change is My Middle Name

We at Ensto are super good at making changes and if we would be able to sell change knowhow, we would be millionaires. Here, the change is constant, and everybody is committed to that. Here comes the biggest change I have seen during the years: from massive change resistance to change positivity. We have rehearsed a lot and learned a lot. If there are no changes for a while people start asking why not. I cannot even count the enormous number of our yearly change projects. It feels good that we are so agile in making changes – I think it tells us we have done something right. Today, change is for us the new normal and I am proud of that.

Making Decisions and Mistakes

To be able to change things we need to be able to make decisions. That is something I am good at. Any decision is better than no decision at all, as being stagnant has never brought anyone anywhere. Making decisions means tolerating mistakes and I always encourage my team members to decide even if there is a risk for failure. We can always correct and make a new decision. Instead of making all the decisions by myself I prefer common decision-making. Sometimes we fail and then we try again. And from every mistake we learn.

What Is Great about Ensto

I am motivated to work as part of a good team consisting of talented colleagues, and I always build teams with competent people smarter than me. Together we can achieve common targets, which is extremely inspiring. It is great to recognize the potential and then see the development and succeeding. Ensto is also an international company and I find it fascinating to work with people from different countries and cultures. In addition, I value the fact that the electricity business is a future business and with our high-quality, responsible products we can do good. Ensto is a profitable, solid company which can help in creating a better life. These things make me happy.

Equality and Trust Capital

At Ensto we are all equal – we do not look at positions or titles. Here, personalities, knowhow diversity and good attitude are valued. For me the most important thing is trust. It is the cornerstone, which goes so deep that it has become a holistic capital in everything I do – in all areas of life. I want to be trustworthy and the starting point for me is that everyone else is too. Trust capital is one of Ensto’s family business values and that can also be seen in the way the owners trust us. I could not imagine a better cooperation with them.

Niko Helander

The writer of the blog, Niko Helander, is working as the Senior Vice President, Overhead Lines Business and Operations at Ensto in Finland.