At this year’s first mentorship meeting, the focus was on building trust, clarifying expectations, and setting an agenda, while also laying the foundation for creating valuable networks. The goal is to provide our mentees with the best possible conditions to grow and achieve their goals over the next nine months.

- The mentorship program is a fantastic opportunity to empower our employees, both personally and professionally, across national borders. I am convinced that this program will help build our shared culture, promote knowledge sharing, and strengthen the individual development of both mentors and mentees, says Anders Gustafsson, CEO of NRC Group.

He has personally benefited from having a mentor and has also served as a mentor himself, so he understands the value these kinds of relationships can bring.

Valuable Lessons from Last Year’s Pilot Project

The mentorship program was piloted last year in Norway and Finland, while Sweden already had a mentorship scheme in place. Now, the program is up and running in all three countries.

- There were several key takeaways and pieces of feedback from the pilot program, explains Laura Luomaranta, HRD Manager at NRC Group Finland. Many participants wanted a mentorship program that spanned the Nordic countries, with mixed mentor-mentee pairs. Additionally, several expressed a desire for the opportunity to network across borders.

Based on participant feedback, this year we have placed greater emphasis on early expectation-setting through workshops and increased the number of in-person meetings.

- I want to share both my work experience and my ideas, while also hoping to learn something from both Luke and Daniel. I see it more as a roundtable discussion – a great opportunity to exchange experiences. It is exciting to be a mentor for both a Norwegian and a Swede, to see and learn from both the Swedish and Norwegian approaches. By comparing these with Finnish practices, I hope to bring back some new ideas to Finland.

Vilde Haugnæss says that this is exactly what she had hoped would happen – that they found each other and wanted to work together as a group.

- It has been incredibly rewarding to see the engagement and interest in the mentorship program across all the Nordic countries, she says.

Rewarding Mentorship for Women at NRC Sweden

Hanna Estman, Business Area Manager for Maintenance at NRC Sweden, is the mentor for Project Coordinator Jennifer Rosengren, who also works at NRC Group Sweden.

- I find it incredibly rewarding to be a mentor and coach another woman in this industry. I want to share my network with Jennifer while also receiving valuable input from her, such as topics we should address at maintenance conferences in Sweden. I believe this can be a very rewarding collaboration, she says. If we can leverage NRC's strengths through a Nordic mentorship and navigator program, while also working towards our strategy’s goals of building outstanding results and a shared culture, this will be a great success. It is a fantastic initiative that we are working so purposefully to become one NRC and one company.