At Innokas Medical, the Christmas is a little bit different this year. Usually, Innokas has remembered its employees with a small Christmas gift every year. Instead of buying and giving any concrete gifts, this year Innokas decided to give a Christmas gift for charity to commonly selected charitable organization.
“We wanted to start a new tradition at Innokas; to pay it forward. In addition to the fact that we’re working on an ethically and socially meaningful field of hi-tech, we want to be able to influence on the welfare of the society even more practical way”, tells Innokas Medical’s HR Manager Minna Salomaa about the new Christmas tradition Innokas has now started.
The selection of the charitable organization was chosen together with Innokas employees by voting the named charitable organizations in December. The organizations were selected based on their reputation and their commonweal operation – and operating with people that really need help was also one of the main criteria. There were the possibility to propose employees’ own suggestion for charitable organizations, also. In the end, The Association of Friends of the University Children's Hospitals were elected to be Innokas’ choice. It’s a charitable organization, founded in 1993, which supports the five Finnish university children's hospitals, development and research, and attempts to improve the comfort of patients during their hospital stay. Over recent years, the association has placed significant attention on the mental health work of children and adolescents.
“We wanted to give a gift that will be genuinely needed. I think it is very great that Innokas’ employees responded this new tradition in a very positive way. We feel this is much more valuable way of giving Christmas gifts than traditional buying process – we feel this as a good spirit sharing for which we encourage other companies, also”, Salomaa concludes.