January 21, 2026

Safety, Sustainability and Straight Talk Belong at the Heart of Company Culture 

Successful company culture often creates a successful company, but it always creates a good company. Explore why safety, sustainability and communication shape culture, and why digitalising them matters.

Key takeaways from the article:

  • Small moments shape culture. Clear, shared reality makes work safer and faster.
  • Safety and sustainability are operational drivers. Digitalising them makes them actionable.
  • One trusted view reduces uncertainty. You can enable better handovers, shutdowns and decisions, on desktop and in the field.

In industrial organisations, culture is often described in big words: values, responsibility, trust. But culture is experienced in the small moments: It is whether a contractor can find the right isolation point without guesswork. Whether a shift handover leaves the next team confident, not uncertain. Whether a maintenance technician spends their time fixing problems, or walking around trying to locate a previously reported issue. When everyday reality is clear, shared and fair, people feel safer, work faster, and trust the organisation more. 

That is also exactly why safety, sustainability, and communication are no longer “support functions”. They are business-critical capabilities, and increasingly, even a deciding factor for talent. Deloitte’s global Gen Z and Millennial research shows that purpose and values matter strongly to job satisfaction, and many are willing to turn down employers that do not align with their values.  

PwC’s workforce research similarly highlights that ESG and sustainability influence whether people join or stay. Even trust at work is now a strategic factor: Edelman’s Trust research shows how quickly a trust gap can open between leadership and employees when people feel information is filtered, delayed, or not credible.  

The Finnish Advantage: Trust Built on Honesty

Finnish working culture has a quiet strength: trust is earned through reliability, directness and fairness, not through perfection. Finland is often described as a high-trust society, where openness and the expectation of “doing what is right” are deeply embedded. In practice, this means that not everything has to be “amazing”, as long as people feel they are treated equally, told the truth, and given the information they need, and when they need it. 

This is an exportable idea. In many global industrial environments, the biggest friction is not a lack of expertise; it is a lack of shared situational truth. The result is unnecessary travel, duplicated work, misunderstandings between office and field teams, and avoidable risk. A culture of honest, timely information flow is something Finland can take to the world. 

Safety: The Value is Clear, But the Price Can be Exponential

Safety leaders often face an unfair expectation: “prove the ROI”. But the real issue is not that safety cannot be measured; it is that human life cannot be priced. Serious industrial risks have not disappeared. They still exist in maintenance work, shutdowns, heavy lifting, confined spaces, hazardous energy, chemical exposure, and complex contractor environments. 

At the same time, there is an economic reality: work-related accidents and illnesses carry enormous societal and business costs. EU-OSHA has highlighted that accidents and ill health cost the EU hundreds of billions of euros annually. This is a reminder that investing in safer ways of working is also one of the most rational decisions an industrial organisation can make. 

Digital Safety Culture is Measurable, But Often Only After Something Happens

Digital risk is the modern counterpart of physical risk. A data leak to the wrong party can create losses as concrete as a broken power cable: disruption, downtime, legal exposure, reputational damage. IBM’s long-running Cost of a Data Breach reporting has put global average breach costs in the multi-million range, driven heavily by business disruption and response work. For industrial organisations, where operational continuity and confidential asset data matter, cyber and information governance are now part of safety leadership, even if they sit in different org boxes. 

Sustainability: Practical, Continuous and Already Operational

Environmental responsibility in industry is not a branding exercise. It is practical operations: energy efficiency, material use, resource planning, waste reduction, reduced travel and smarter maintenance. And it is never “done”. Waiting for regulations to change — or for technologies to become perfect — is not a strategy. Competitive organisations are those that continuously improve. 

In Finland, large industrial companies have integrated sustainability into operations and supply chains, and they increasingly require the same from partners. Competitive suppliers will not only prove their own responsibility; they will help improve their customers’ sustainability outcomes and provide documentation to support credible external reporting. 

Communication: The Small Things Shape Culture

Big announcements belong to the intranet. But culture is shaped by small, operational information flows. 

  • A maintenance request exists — but where exactly is the asset, and what does “near the pump station” mean in practice? 
  • An engineer goes to site not to do engineering, but to confirm reality because as-built documentation is outdated. 
  • A contractor arrives for a shutdown task without a clear, shared understanding of hazards, access routes, or isolation points. 

These are “communication problems” — but they present as productivity loss, safety exposure and frustration. For People & Culture and Communications leaders, this is where trust is won or lost: Do the employees and contractors consistently feel they have the right information, at the right time, without needing to chase it?  

Digital Tools Help Safety, Sustainability, Communication and HR to Shape Your Company Culture

For the Safety Leader (HSE)

Digital tools are not just reporting systems, they can make safety visible and actionable in the workflow. The most powerful improvement often comes from reducing uncertainty: clearer isolation planning, better contractor onboarding, fewer rushed decisions in the field, and better situational awareness during shutdowns and modifications. 

For the Sustainability Leader

Sustainability depends on operational choices. When teams can plan remotely, reduce unnecessary site visits, and execute maintenance and projects more efficiently, emissions and resource use improve as a by-product of better operations and the results can be documented consistently.

For the Communications Leader

Trust is built through shared truth. When teams work using fragmented sources, communication often becomes “broadcasting” instead of enabling action. Visual, reality-based communication increases clarity across departments and partners, especially when changes must be explained fast.

For the HR / People & Culture Leader

Talent expectations have changed. Younger specialists increasingly consider values, culture, and credibility when choosing employers. In industrial environments, modern culture is not only office benefits; it is whether daily work feels safe, informed, fair, and well-supported.

Practical Takeaways You Can Apply Immediately

If you lead safety, sustainability, communication or HR, these are concrete questions worth asking: 

  • Where do we still rely on “tribal knowledge” to stay safe or work efficiently? 
  • Which decisions are slowed down because reality must be verified on site? 
  • What fails in handovers (shift-to-shift, project-to-operations, contractor onboarding) because of a missing context information? 
  • What would change if field teams had the same situational knowledge as office teams?  

Finland’s honest, fair, and high-trust working culture is a competitive advantage, but it scales best when truth flows effortlessly. If you’d like to explore what this could look like in your own environment, SolidComp can show how Reality Twin supports safer work planning, stronger sustainability outcomes and smoother day-to-day operations, without replacing your existing systems and what works. 

Reality Twin makes truth usable, not just stored

SolidComp Reality Twin is designed to provide reliable, reality-based information into daily work. It’s an up-to-date, true-to-life 3D model of a production facility, integrating 3D scan data, design models, 360° imagery and asset information into a single visual interface.  

Reality Twin enables in practice: 

  • Faster, clearer communication: teams and contractors can look at the same visual reality when discussing plans, risks and changes. 
  • Safety work grounded in context: SolidComp’s Safety Module includes support for LOTO procedures and safety training in realistic 3D environments.  
  • Field adoption, not just desktop use: Reality Twin Field provides mobile access, including asset search tool and real-time tagging to capture observations.  
  • Engagement and learning: photorealistic Gaussian Visuals can improve understanding and alignment by making the environment feel real and easier to interpret.  

With Reality Twin, it’s not only about seeing your facility in virtual 3D, but also about making reality accessible enough that it becomes a shared, trusted way of working, across roles, shifts and partner networks. 


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Marketing Manager

Emma London

Emma London is a Marketing Manager who loves it when companies communicate clearly and compellingly. At SolidComp, she leads our marketing, brand and communications work, making sure our story resonates.

SolidCompin markkinointipäällikkö Emma London innostuu selkeästä ja vaikuttavasta yritysviestinnästä. SolidCompilla hän vastaa markkinoinnista, brändistä ja viestinnästä, huolehtien siitä, että tarinamme puhuttelee ja kohtaa yleisönsä.

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