STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Espresso House, the leading coffee shop brand in the Nordic region, with nearly 500 coffee shops in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Germany, today announced the latest phase of its longstanding commitment and effort to support the health and wellbeing of its team members.
As one of the largest youth employers across the Nordics with over 7,000 employees working across 500 sites, Espresso House has a clear obligation to foster and maintain the highest quality working standards for all its colleagues.
As part of its ongoing commitment to be an employer of choice in the Nordics, the chain has finalized a suite of clearly defined “House Habits” that will detail enhanced workplace policies for the Group.
“House Habits” will be based on and seek to surpass internationally recognised standards and principles, including all relevant regional and national standards.
These will focus on:
- Setting clear expectations as an employer and for employees, codified through “House Habits”
- Enhancing centre of operations and onsite training, including updated programmes, with mandatory attendance and regular evaluation;
- Attracting the best talent, creating the best work environment, and ensuring work-life balance, underpinned by upgraded recruitment procedures and a new and bespoke human resources platform;
- Improving understanding of colleague priorities, via frequent internal sentiment and wellbeing surveys;
- Fostering diversity, equality, and inclusion in the workplace, with regular evaluation and reaffirmed expectations;
- Ensuring an open dialogue between employees and management; and,
- Establishing metrics to track progress.
These areas of priority will build on recent initiatives and progress:
- In May 2023, Espresso House launched a new data driven human resources system to improve the employee life-cycle, boost efficiency, and better understand café sentiment;
- In January 2023, Espresso House announced an 81m SEK investment to increase wages across all cafés, corresponding to an increase of 10 SEK per hour for café employees, and putting Espresso House employees among the top paid quartile of hospitality workers;
- Espresso House entered a partnership with Attensi to introduce interactive and educational gamified training platform across its entire workforce;
- Established a Group Advisory Board, comprised of cross-functional team members across offices and operations, to enhance communication, feedback, and collaboration with top management;
- Introduced Workplace by Meta group-wide to improve communications and transparency across all levels of Espresso House; and,
- In 2021, Espresso House introduced “Barista Pulse,” an anonymous survey by which employees can report on their well-being when ending shifts.
In June, under the Group’s new House Habits initiative, it will also launch a campaign focused on supporting young employees entering their first job and help lay the foundation for their future career development.
To ensure Espresso House consistently lives up to its values of being a warm and welcoming home for both employees and guests, it is also committing to self-report progress against these standards on an annual basis. Through greater transparency, Espresso House seeks to hold itself to account and to set an example for the hospitality industry. Furthermore, Espresso House commits to working collaboratively with union and employee organisations with whom it has collective agreements across its jurisdictions, to provide input into the standards.
“At Espresso House, our people come first and we truly want to create a community where we help each other achieve our best. As of one the Nordic’s largest youth employers, we have a duty of care to ensure that our people start their careers knowing what great feels like,” said Espresso House CEO, Anssi Thureson. “In my time at Espresso House, I have had the great pleasure of visiting and working alongside colleagues in many of our coffee shops, hearing their views and aspirations. Their insights have formed a core part of the direction we have taken and the changes we have already put in place. Being an employer of choice is an ongoing journey and our work to do better is never done. Taking care of our people is a primary responsibility and a fundamental pillar of Nordic culture, and therefore, our culture as a Group.”
Thureson continued, “Our promise at Espresso House is that we will always strive to continuously improve our teams and guest experiences. This is an opportunity for us to be both introspective and collaborative with our staff and Unions. I am confident that these exercises will only make us stronger as a team and I look forward to providing public updates on our progress.”
