Metso: fostering a culture of online inclusion and diversity using Microsoft Accessibility Tools and Microsoft Unified Support

“Making your workplace accessible is not necessarily about big, fancy moves. It’s about creating a safe space to learn and thrive. It’s about driving awareness – and laying a strong foundation to build on in the future.”

Saara Vikman, Talent & Development Manager at Metso, is describing the culture of inclusivity and diversity that her company is striving to promote – and the initiative that’s making it happen.

“Metso employs an excitingly multifaceted workforce spanning nearly 50 countries, 16,000+ people and 90 different nationalities,” says Vikman. “It’s essential for us that each of them feels included, supported and empowered to be themselves – both online and offline.”

But when it comes to hybrid working, that’s not always easy to achieve. According to the World Health Organization, one in five people have a disability, yet only one in ten of those affected currently have access to assistive technology.

“This is where we have work to do at Metso,” she explains. “There are so many simple, yet highly significant steps that each of us can take to make our work more accessible and inclusive, particularly when using collaborative technology.”

To educate its workforce about them, Metso has launched a series of Microsoft Unified Support trainings aimed at promoting a culture of digital inclusion and accessibility for all its employees.  

“We don't know, and are never going to know, the full extent of disabilities and challenges that people at Metso are facing,” she says. “So all we can do is make sure that all of them feel heard and considered.

“Thanks to Microsoft, its courses and accessibility tools, we’re getting this message across to everyone.”

New challenges arise with the pandemic

Metso is a Finnish manufacturing company serving aggregates, mining and metals customers in a wide range of markets that include Europe, North and South America, Australia, India and more.

A long-time champion of workplace inclusivity, the company has spent the past three years exploring ways to address the new accessibility challenges brought forward by the pandemic.

“The health crisis has opened up our eyes to the many benefits of collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams and PowerPoint,” says Vikman. “But at the same time, it has completely changed the way we work.

“It has created new online accessibility issues for people with visual and hearing impairments, and also with mental health disability and neurodiversity.”

Realizing this has been a game changer for Vikman and her team. “We knew that the lockdowns had created new dynamics, but it was only by listening to and talking with people within the organization that we truly learned how these new dynamics were impacting our people and their working ways,” she continues.

“To change this, we decided that we needed to start from the basics, and drive awareness on these issues and their effects on employees across the company.”

The result was a Digital Inclusion guide that Metso released, in January 2023, with the aim of informing employees about the practical steps they could take to make their working conditions more accessible and open.

“The guide was the very first, landmark step of our online accessibility strategy,” she says. “We used it to define accessibility, but also provide links and resources on the tools they could use on Teams, PowerPoint, Outlook and M365 suite to make work more accessible.”

The next step was making sure that people knew how to use these tools in the best way.

Inside the Unified Support trainings

From Immersive reader to live captions and transcription, language interpretation, CART caption, Accessibility in PowerPoint Live and more, accessibility tools are an integral part of the Microsoft 365 product offering, and available to anyone.

“Some of these tools are absolutely essential to our work and many of our colleagues, and yet not many know of their existence,” says Vikman. “That’s where we saw the need to put together some trainings on how to use them – and promote them as a natural progression of our guide.”

Carried out as part of the Microsoft Unified Services, the trainings focused on three key topics: Accessibility and inclusion; Accessibility in the modern workplace; and Accessibility in PowerPoint.

Each of them had 16 places available and consisted of two sessions where a Microsoft cloud solution architect explored best practice discussions, practical demonstrations and exercises. “We were immediately impressed with how well the courses were structured and presented,” she explains.

“But the best part was that even before they started, we could already foresee how much of a tangible impact they were going to have on our colleagues – particularly for products like PowerPoint and Microsoft Teams, which are widely used across our workforce.”

A waterfall effect that’s transforming the working culture

Seats for the courses sold out right away. “All three trainings turned out to be a huge success,” says Vikman. “Not only did we reach maximum capacity, but we’ve already received interest for more and broader courses that we’re hoping to hold in the future.”

Feedback on them has been highly positive too – with an attendee hailing the “really good examples and tips provided on how to use the accessibility tools to create more inclusive meetings and work environments”.

“Many have told us how useful these courses have proved for them, and that they’ve changed their perspective on inclusivity in the workplace,” Vikman adds. “And some of them are already implementing these tools in their day-to-day.”

The live captions tool is a prime example. “Metso employs more than 90 nationalities in almost50 countries around the world, so not everyone speaks and understands English at the same level,” she explains.

“I recently attended an HR community call, and I was pleasantly surprised that at the beginning of the call, there was an introductory slide showing how to turn captions on. That was the first time I actually felt that we were being more inclusive online.”

Another example is the Accessibility Checker on PowerPoint, which is helping to shed light on the neurodiversity issues and disabilities that are often invisible to others. “We see interest in these tools growing by the day,” she says, an excitement in her eyes.

“This is ultimately what we were hoping to achieve with these courses: a waterfall effect that, together with the additional trainings and campaigns we have planned, is making work life much better, more inclusive and diverse for everyone.”