At Nordea our people come from 107 countries

Cultural diversity is steadily growing at Nordea. At the end of 2023, citizens from 107 countries worked at Nordea, speaking a total of 66 languages.

“This rich diversity is a proof point of inclusion and brings in a wide range of perspectives, which encourages innovation and enables us to develop products and services and attract diverse talents. Denmark has the broadest cultural diversity in Nordea, with 75 countries represented, but in general all of our workplaces are quite diverse,” explains Head of Diversity & Inclusion Åsa Nilsson Billme and continues:

“We’re of course delighted if we have succeeded in creating a workplace that is open to people from all over the world, but are we’re also highly aware that diversity doesn’t automatically foster inclusion. At Nordea, we work with inclusion in a focused manner and are continuously launching activities and tools to increase engagement and raise awareness, both internally and externally, towards our customers and the society we operate in.”    

We do not register our peoples’ ethnicities, races or similar, to comply with personal information legislation. We can however have our peoples’ citizenships on record and at year-end 2023, people from 107 countries worked at Nordea. The arrow shows the development since 2022.

Diversity a company target

One example of this focused approach is our two major KPIs in the diversity and inclusion area, one regarding gender balance and one regarding peoples’ perception of being fairly treated. These targets are integrated into Nordea’s sustainability targets. Åsa Nilsson Billme also points out that a wide palette of tools and trainings are available to both leaders and employees to ensure the topic is actively addressed in team meetings, recruitment, retention and so on.

“But it’s not all guidelines coming from the top,” she stresses. “We have several employee resource groups (ERGs) that are quite active. One of them is the cross-cultural ERG, a group supporting people coming to Nordea from another country. The active members of the ERG are for example arranging networking opportunities, social gatherings and cultural events to help newcomers settle in.”

The employee resource groups also work as sounding boards, giving Nordea management feedback on where Nordea succeeds and where we might fail when it comes to being inclusive.

Read more about work life at Nordea and see our policy on diversity and inclusion