The City of Helsinki is committed to promoting equality, non-discrimination and human rights in all of our activities. The city’s measures to promote equality and gender equality have been compiled in two equality and non-discrimination plans, one for the city’s staff and the other for the city’s services.
“Helsinki is an international, open and free city, where everyone should experience freedom of expression, safety and absolute non-discrimination. Helsinki is also our shared home and we can work to make it better together. Everything we do matters,” said Mayor of Helsinki Juhana Vartiainen.
The City of Helsinki is participating in the Finnish government's “Action, not only words” campaign, in which participating organisations can highlight the concrete measures they are taking to build an equitable Finland free of racism, as well as declare their own commitment to this effort on the campaign’s website.
See the City of Helsinki’s commitment (in Finnish)(Link leads to external service)
Helsinki is a city for all
The city’s goal is to be a city for everyone, not just in principle, but also in everyday practice. As Finland's largest employer and an organisation of nearly 40,000 employees, the City of Helsinki is constantly working to ensure that different measures to promote equality spread through the entire organisation.
Helsinki has been actively developing its practice of anonymous recruitment, which encourages equal treatment of applicants and a more diverse range of employees. In anonymous recruitment, all personal information listed on the job applications, such as the applicant’s name, birthdate, gender, address and first language, is hidden from view until after the invitations to interviews are sent out. For several years now, the city's recruitment notices have included a diversity clause, which encourages people from underrepresented groups to apply for open positions.
The City of Helsinki has also conducted extensive training to help its employees identify racism and act in an anti-racist manner. More than 6,000 employees in our day care centres, schools and educational institutions have participated in the training, for example, along with our entire Youth Services staff. The city is also planning to organise anti-racism workshops for its Social Services, Health Care and Rescue Services Division personnel in the near future.
The start of the “Action, not only words” campaign has inspired Helsinki to join with Finland’s other major cities to consider collaborative measures: a joint training series on racism is being planned that is hoped to strengthen the skills of employees in different cities and encourage a shared dialogue on the subject.
The “Action, not only words” campaign will run until the end of the current government term. The campaign was launched on 27 August and is coordinated by the Prime Minister’s Office. In 2021, the City of Helsinki participated in the “I am Anti-racist” campaign coordinated by Finland’s Ministry of Justice and Non-Discrimination Ombudsman.
