People
We constantly strive to be an engaging, diverse, and inclusive workplace with attractive career opportunities.
Our people are our strength and most valuable asset. Ramboll is a people business, committed to living our strong values, which is clearly evidenced in our new strategy, The Partner for Sustainable Change. In the first year of the strategy, we continued to make Ramboll an attractive place to work, where employees are valued and empowered to contribute to developing a more sustainable society.
Grounded in the strategy, we supported our leaders and employees with training, up-skilling, and more focus on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). We focused on attracting new bright minds to Ramboll, as well as improving the well-being and retention of our 17,500 employees.
We aspire to build an organisation of inclusion and belonging, and create a workplace that reflects our commitment to society. To that end, we are working to achieve a more balanced organisation strongly focusing on gender representation. Our goal is to have a 40% representation of women in the organisation by 2025. Furthermore, we embed diversity and equity in our people processes to mitigate and challenge bias when making decisions.
Our internal employee satisfaction and engagement survey (ESES) has an all-time high overall satisfaction score of 4.2/5 with a participation rate of 90% globally, reflecting strong employee engagement. Moreover, internal surveys indicate the majority of our employees have engaged with the strategy in various ways during 2022.
Our internal Employee satisfaction and engagement
survey (ESES) results
- : 90%
Employee response rate in ESES 2022
- : 4.2/5
Overall ESES satisfaction score 2022
Attracting and developing bright minds
We attract and develop bright minds and competencies for our sustainability, digital, and commercial transformation.
In 2022, we intensified efforts to attract diverse talent to Ramboll while not losing sight of retaining and developing our employees. We focused on a seamless recruitment experience and launched state-of-the art recruitment system including an internal career marketplace and a relationship management system to strengthen engagement and the candidate experience. More than 200,000 job applications were received in 2022, and we hired 16% more employees as compared with the previous year.
EDI remained an integral part of our recruitment effort. We delivered training sessions on inclusive hiring and unconscious bias in recruitment, applied more inclusive language in job advertisements, and launched an EDI hiring guide for managers. These initiatives, among others, have resulted in a greater awareness within the company on hiring diverse talents. This has led to a more than 3% improved gender diversity among our new hires. A new hire is referring to all new, external hires joining Ramboll in 2022, as compared with the previous year.
Further, we noted many former colleagues re-join the company. A Ramboll alumni network will be launched in 2023 to strengthen connections with former employees.
Focus on
Our people strategy
The ambition of our people strategy is to be recognised as a highly engaging, modern, and inclusive workplace with attractive career opportunities. Our employees should experience they make a difference on sustainable change. This translates into the following focus areas:
- We attract and develop bright minds competencies (for our sustainability, digital, and commercial transformation)
- As we grow and transform, we maintain and foster a modern workplace with strong sense of belonging, wellbeing, and company culture
- We foster an inclusive culture that reflects Ramboll’s commitment to society, clients, and people
- We drive the strategic transformation of Ramboll through strong and value-based leadership
A modern workplace
As our company grows, we continue to foster a modern workplace with strong sense of belonging, well-being, and company culture.
The global competition for talent intensified in 2022, posing challenges for Ramboll and most other businesses. We observed higher-than expected employee turnover on par with the general market tendencies. The sense of belonging and company culture is naturally affected as we welcome many new colleagues. That is why we have intensified our focus on actions to engage, inspire, and retain our employees.
Focus on
Key elements of our retention programme
- Focus on sense of belonging through employee dialogues in workshops and gatherings
- Career and development conversations through launch of our Career Philosophy, increased focus on mentoring and leadership development
- Local activities to boost collaboration, engagement and well-being through professional and technical networks, and social activities
- Offboarding and stay interviews to understand motivational drivers
Gender balance in total workforce percentage of women
- : 37%
In 2022
- : 40%
Target 2025
Equality, diversity and inclusion
Equality is about ensuring every individual has an equal opportunity to make the most of their lives and talents. At its core, equality means fairness.
Diversity is about who we are. It encompasses everything about us. It is how we show up. Diversity is everything that makes us unique, both seen and unseen.
Inclusion is welcoming and acknowledging what makes us diverse. It means making sure that everybody is heard and able to participate.
In 2022, we launched three new global employee reference groups to extend the conversation on important topics and create an even better understanding of our employee’s experience, focused on:
- The experiences of our LGBTQ+ community
- The experience of women leaders in Ramboll
- EDI in business development
Gender distribution
- : 32%
Percentage of women in our company governance body
- : 41%
New hires gender balance, percentage of women. A new hire is referring to all new, external hires joining Ramboll.
Enabling an inclusive culture
We foster an inclusive culture that reflects Ramboll’s commitment to our society, clients, and people.
An ambitious EDI agenda requires a strong leadership focus, awareness of the whole organisation, and a willingness to be personally accountable for being inclusive. EDI is everybody’s business.
In 2022, we launched several global EDI activities and expanded our local initiatives. We continued moving the needle on diversity, ensuring equitable processes, and creating an inclusive work environment for all.
Focus on
With pride!
We were delighted to be a sponsor of the Copenhagen Pride Parade in Denmark, in August, as part of our first-ever globally-aligned LGBTQAI+ Pride campaign in Ramboll. More than 80 employees took part in the parade, in a celebration of love and community.
We asked some of our colleagues why it’s important for them to support the parade:
“The Copenhagen Pride Parade is one of the most important celebrations of the values that I believe in, that everyone has the right to be their true self both in their private life and when at work. This has become even more apparent to me when working and travelling to countries where there is a lack of these basic rights. I hope to see Ramboll sponsor and participant in similar events in all our geographies.” – Christian Nyerup Nielsen, global division director, Water
Empowering value-based leadership
We drive the strategic transformation of Ramboll through strong and value-based leadership.
Having great leaders is a prerequisite for attracting, retaining, and enabling talent, as well as achieving an agile, innovative, and more sustainable company. We enable our leaders in Ramboll to drive business performance and value creation for our clients, as well as motivate and empower employees to shape the future of our company. We also require them to be role models for our values and culture.
Leadership is a strategic focus area for Ramboll, and our Leadership Principles define the way we strive to lead. The Leadership Principles are guided by our strategy and designed to guide the decisions leaders make and the actions they take as a Ramboll leader.
During 2022, we continued implementing the principles. We did a full-circle assessment workshop with the entire senior leadership team, held several business unit workshops and deep dives with leadership, as well as recruited leaders in close alignment with the principles.
Inclusive leadership is also an important focus for Ramboll. One of our 2022 initiatives was to partner with the NeuroLeadership Institute to support our leaders with inclusive habits. This involved workshops on the science of inclusion and an inclusive leadership awareness campaign for all leaders in Ramboll.
We have implemented a new global Talent Review process in Ramboll to ensure a strong internal talent pipeline and boost the visibility of talents across Ramboll. It is a way to equip our leaders to make better, easier decisions about development opportunities.In 2022, nearly two-thirds of newly hired leaders in Ramboll were internal hires, demonstrating that internal career paths are working - which is good for our employee engagement, retention and talent pipeline.
Leadership principles
Developing a consistent leadership culture across all teams, disciplines, and business units by:
- defining shared criteria for the way, we recruit, develop, promote, and reward leaders
- providing a standard for measuring success
- giving us a common language for discussing what great leadership looks like and what we can do – each of us and as a company – to become better at leadership