Fostering Talent Retention through DEI Practices in Multinational Companies operating in Finland
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Multinational companies (MNC) increasingly rely on migrant employees to address talent shortages as both workforce and population become more diverse. However, migrant employees often encounter distinct workplace challenges. Consequently, fostering a stable and motivated workforce requires MNCs to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices that support migrant employees’ everyday work experiences. Therefore, it is important to broaden the understanding on how DEI initiatives shape migrant employees’ workplace experiences and retention. Accordingly, this study explores how migrant employees experience these initiatives in MNCs operating in Finland, and how these experiences influence their intentions to stay.
The literature review of this study integrates research on DEI, DEI practices, and talent retention in order to examine the relationship between inclusive organizational practices and talent retention. The study was conducted with a qualitative approach, and the data was collected with eight semi-structured interviews with migrant employees working in different MNCs operating in Finland. The interviews explored themes related to migrant employees’ experiences of DEI in their workplaces as well as factors connected to talent retention. The collected data was analyzed by using thematic analysis, as this method offered a clear and structured way to generate insights into the complex social phenomenon of how DEI initiatives influence migrant employees’ everyday experiences and their intentions to remain with their organizations.
The findings confirm a positive link between DEI initiatives and migrant employees’ retention. Specifically, DEI initiatives were found to shape migrant employees’ intentions to stay through their effect on everyday work experiences, sense of inclusion, motivation, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and perceptions of fairness. Importantly, the positive effects of DEI initiatives were strongly influenced by how effectively these initiatives were integrated into everyday organizational practices. Participants who perceived DEI efforts as authentic and consistently implemented reported higher levels of organizational commitment. The findings therefore suggest that solely implementing DEI initiatives is insufficient to positively influence migrant employees’ workplace experiences and their retention. For some participants of this study, DEI represented a fundamental organizational value that influenced their organizational commitment and intentions to stay even more strongly than financial initiatives.
The study further extends existing literature by providing empirical evidence from Finland, a context that remains relatively underrepresented in DEI and migrant employee research. In practice, the findings of this study offer practical guidance for MNCs in designing DEI initiatives that genuinely support the long-term retention of migrant employees.