Mind the growth
We are way past guiding toward growth for the sake of growth.
Our purpose
The world is rapidly becoming uninhabitable, much because of our collective taste for consumption, production, quick profits and mooooore of everything.
At the same time, the world needs to thrive through innovation, creativity, purpose and yes, growth. Sustainable growth.
The kind where sustainable ideas are rewarded with higher profits, making senseless production and consumption a thing of the past.
Sustainable growth is the purpose that drives Differ.
Our belief
With a holistic view on sustainability, we present a clear-cut proposition to employees, clients and society. We aim to solve all relevant problems in an inclusive and sustainable manner.
We help our customers focus and advance their sustainability efforts. Naturally, this entails prioritizing and focusing on what truly matters. Our materiality analysis is a result of a collaborative effort between Differ employees and our stakeholders, and guides our internal and external sustainability priorities.
Trust, reliability and quality are essential requirements for healthy customer relationships. Hence, we constantly work to uphold our business ethics through internal trainings, project evaluations, and clear policies.
The following policies are communicated to all employees: travel policy, cellphone policy, diversity and equality policy, alcohol and drug policy, and working environment policy.
Differ is part of XLENT group and the ownership structure consists of both its senior employees and the investment company Neqst AB. Neqst AB is based in Scandinavia and has a clear policy to their holdings of 100% tax domiciliation in the country where they operate. Neqst itself has a 100% Swedish company structure and tax domicilation, and has a long-term and sustainable perspective on its ownership and holdings.
We mainly work with strengthening our clients’ ability to drive income. Economic sustainability is fundamental in a sustainable society, which is why we regard this as a part of working with sustainability. We believe that the economic part of sustainability cannot be disregarded, nor can it adversely affect ecological or social sustainability. Thus we cannot chose to work with economic sustainability solely. Basically, we believe that sustainability is about having a long-term focus, responsibility and to secure reduced environmental impact – as this is good business practice, too.
We always evaluate our projects through qualitative discussions and NPS-score measurements to ensure that our clients achieve real value.
We believe that our expertise within strategic analysis and understanding the customer has immense potential to contribute to our clients’ work with sustainability, and specifically the end-customers’ environmental impact. For instance, we see great possibilities within environmental positioning – projects where our clients sell sustainability to their customers – and we have already worked with one of the vehicle inspection companies to identify how they can maximize its societal impact in its work with their customers.
Loyalty, CRM and strategies based on understanding the customer are all great starting points to find a top combination of impact and sustainability. We believe that we can help our clients enhance their ability to steer their customers in the right direction – a direction that is both financially and environmentally sustainable. For example, we have helped one of the largest companies in the energy sector to direct their communication and customer management towards fossile-free solutions for its customers.
In order to lead ourselves, each other and our organization according to our unique culture, we have developed the Differ Way. It clarifies our values and beliefs, describes our way of working, and what we encourage in terms of behavior. In short, this means:
We have an including, supportive and developing way of working – creating both well-being, project delivery and personal development
We work actively with all four dimensions of leadership to ensure both the good employeeship as well as the good leadership
We measure employee engagement and eNPS, constantly work on internal improvements, and follow our work environment policy.
We build our success and our sustainability through our employees. That is why we have a clear and transparent framework for competence and career development for all employees at all levels. Among other things, this means employees are assigned a mentor, a personal development plan, and are active in our firm’s development. For us, it goes without saying that everyone’s unique competencies are put to use, both in projects and in our own development.
We have, ever since we were founded in 1996, focused on growing by training and continuously educating our own employees. This is done every day, and in every project, rather than focusing on specific courses. When an individual need arises, there is always a possibility to take courses or complete specific training.
We see the importance of having the right future colleagues apply for a job at Differ. This requires that we are seen by students, and that it is clear to them what we stand for. To achieve this, we work long-term with student relationships at selected universities.
At Differ, we are guided by a clear policy on equality and diversity.
For a long time, Differ has focused on creating an equal workplace. As an example, we have focused on recruiting female consultants and have a clear goal of 50% female consultants, Naturally, this number will vary over time. As of now, 43% of our consultants are women and 57% men. In Differ’s management team, 27% are women and 73% are men.
Ever since Differ was founded, we have facilitated parental leave for all our colleagues, offered parental pay and thus have a high outtake of parental leave.
We care for equal treatment of our employees and continuously make sure that colleagues are treated equally regardless of gender, gender identity, ethnicity, religion or other beliefs, functional variations, sexual orientation or age.
We are currently working on an enhanced and more thorough environmental policy with clear and accessible policies and targets for business trips and company cars.
At our office, we have separation of waste and use green electricity. We regularly throw “after works” and theme parties at our office, which means there is low need for travelling.
All our financial functions are digitized.
