SAS Institute among the ten best places to work in Finland

CARY, NC - Business analytics leader SAS Institute recently announced that the company got the 7th place in the “Best places to work in Finland 2009” survey that is conducted annually by the Great Place to Work® Institute. This is the second year that SAS took part in the general category of the survey, which is meant for companies of less than 500 employees. In the final results only the best third of all participating companies will be listed publically as the best working places, and yet SAS was already the 15th in the 2008 results.


Great Place to Work® Institute charts annually the best working places in 30 countries all over the world. The survey is based on over 25 years of research and is recognized as a standard for a good working place. The best working place survey was now conducted the 7th time and the final positioning is mainly based on opinions of the employees of the participating organizations. Two thirds of the scores form directly from the results of the staff questionnaire. The last third is then formed from the expert estimation by Great Place to Work® Institute Finland, based on a background questionnaire that every participating organization fills out about the company’s human resources management.

"It is a large part of our company culture that we take care of our employees”, says Matti Suutala, the Managing Director of SAS Institute Finland. “We were thrilled already from our position last year, but to have risen now among the best ten clearly shows that we have been able to utilize the feedback from 2008 results. That gives us even more reason to be proud.”

"What our employees seem specifically satisfied with is the fact that we strongly support that there remains a healthy balance between work and personal life,” says Annukka Kaltiala, the HR Manager of SAS Institute Finland. “This shows especially for families with children. If an employee’s child is sick, the company prefers that the parent stays home instead of hiring help from outside to take care of the small patient. We strive to create a flexible working environment for our employees and offer interesting and motivating tasks as well as a possibility to learn and improve. I believe these are the facts that make our employees stick with SAS.”

SAS Institute has recently taken part in several Great Place to Work surveys in Europe as well as in the United States and has done invariably well in all of them. In addition, FORTUNE Magazine recently listed SAS 12th time in a row among the annual list of "100 Best Companies to Work for”.

About SAS
SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions delivered within an integrated framework, SAS helps customers at more than 45,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know®