Reputation success story: CEO Turkka Kuusisto sheds light on the record-breaking reputation rise of Finland’s main postal service Posti

Reputation and Trust Analytics’ Development Director Riku Ruokolahti interviewed Turkka Kuusisto, CEO of Finland’s main postal service, Posti. The 385-year-old company reached Finland’s biggest measured increase in reputation in 2023: how has a deep understanding of data helped management on its reputation journey?

Posti has had a positive trend in the Reputation&Trust survey for four years, and the company recorded its biggest rise in reputation in 2023. The company achieved a staggering increase of 0.18 points to a score of 2.68. The sentiment in this interview is very different from that of the Ruokolahti-Kuusisto meeting four years ago.

“At that time, Posti’s reputation had been declining for several years in a row. In my opinion, in such a situation, there was no other option but to divide the survey and its results into parts and decide how to proceed,” Turkka Kuusisto recalls.

 

 

Posti’s overall reputation score had been declining since 2016, reaching 2.26, the lowest reputation level measured for the company at that time. This is a very weak reputation score in the Reputation&Trust model.

“It’s not nice to present such results,” says Riku Ruokolahti, adding that Kuusisto did not try to explain the reputation situation, but instead took immediate action. Kuusisto sat down with his colleagues and spent several hours trying to understand Posti’s current situation so that they could create an action plan to improve reputation and trust scores.

“What is the point of explaining the results of an objective survey? Rather, it is worth sitting down and trying to understand what explains the results and the drivers behind the results. We started by acknowledging the facts with my colleagues and then took an engineering approach to the research results. We identified the key issues and created a clear action plan. At the same time, we updated the company’s raison d’être, strategy, values and leadership principles. They have supported each other along the way and gone hand in hand with our reputation. I believe that our work has been successful in this way,” says Kuusisto.

 

 

“It was worth sitting down,” says Ruokolahti. Since 2020, Posti’s reputation has increased every year. Based on historical data from the Reputation&Trust survey, the changes in Posti’s reputation are exceptional in the business world.

“Obviously it took a lot of determination and willpower. But reputation can be turned around from a downward trend to growth with better management,” says Kuusisto.

 

“A black belt management trick” – working systematically with Posti’s reputation

Posti’s reputation and trust figures from four years ago inspired investments in management, the workplace and corporate responsibility. Kuusisto says that systematic work has been done on these three issues, both in larger measures and in smaller everyday actions.

“I am very proud of all Posti’s employees for the positive development of the results,” says Kuusisto.

Posti is a remarkably large and labor-intensive company, employing some 17,000 professionals. “It is jokingly said that Posti is the size of a small village,” says Kuusisto, adding that change in an organization of Posti’s size takes time and that he is therefore surprised that the turnaround in reputation has happened so quickly.

“From our point of view, this is a black belt management trick,” says Ruokolahti, commenting on the speed of the turnaround.

“I thought it would be like a marathon. Or a triathlon. I’ve been thinking about the recipe for success, and the main one is that we have grown closer as a working community and set out to develop the post office together in a common direction and with a common purpose,” says Kuusisto.

Kuusisto believes that the components of Posti’s recovery are the development of the working community, better management and shared responsibility.

 

Reputation&Trust survey is a measure of overall quality

The Reputation&Trust model is a holistic measure of overall quality: everything the company does affects the results of the research. Posti has the largest distribution network in Finland, with postal workers visiting around three million homes and businesses every weekday.

“All their processes affect the measurement results. All interactions from recruitment to service and finally to products. It’s a huge jungle of interactions,” says Ruokolahti and asks Kuusisto how Posti has got all its stakeholders on board with the change.

“Honesty, transparency and dialogue. At the end of the day, it’s nothing more than that,” says Kuusisto.

 

Posti has made significant progress in its image as an employer

Looking at the annual measurements of Posti’s Reputation&Trust survey, the company has made the most significant progress as an employer. In 2020, the general public gave Posti a very low score (1.82) in the workplace dimension. By 2023, it will have risen by a staggering 0.68 points to a reputation score of 2.50.

 

 

“Posti is a 385-year-old institution and I have been privileged to lead it for four years. I am proud and grateful that Posti’s employees have managed to give its reputation such a boost,” says Kuusisto.

“When I started as CEO, Posti was in a very different place. Now, four years later, I would like to believe and see that Posti is an organization that lives to its own purpose, with a clear vision, a very compact strategy and, above all, a better working community that has been able to create better customer satisfaction”.

 

TURKKA KUUSISTO is a Finnish business leader. He has been CEO of Posti Group Oyj since 6 February 2020. Kuusisto will become CEO of Finnair in the summer of 2024.

RIKU RUOKOLAHTI is Development Director at  Reputation and Trust Analytics. He has developed the Luottamus&Maine research model and coaches top management and management teams on holistic reputation management.