Overview & Highlights
We are proud of our people – the core and strength of our business. Equality and diversity are part of our key priorities. We aim to diversify our workforce and audience while promoting equal opportunities and inclusion for everyone – regardless of gender, age, nationality, race, religion or political opinion. If something isn’t what it should be, we empower our employees and our audience to speak up. We are committed to creating a fun and inclusive culture while providing a safe and healthy working environment that helps people thrive and develop at MTG.
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We take a holistic approach to Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion
We know that companies who treat their employees equally, have a diverse workforce, and include everyone, are more creative, innovative and competitive than those who don’t. Today, 70 nationalities are represented at MTG. 61% of our employees are male and 39% are female. We are less diverse at the management and executive levels with a gender split of 35% females and 65% males, so we are working hard to create an inclusive and open culture free from any form of discrimination or unconscious bias. In 2018, we continued to roll out our gender bias training for local management in Sweden, Finland, Norway, and the UK to ensure everyone has equal opportunities. We decided to make equality and diversity our key priority and took a holistic approach on our gender equality work to include diversity and inclusion, and appointed an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) steering group with employees in the Nordic markets and the UK. The steering group has started identifying challenges and solutions across the markets to set a long-term strategy for improving EDI in the years to come.
Female employees are under-represented in the technology and gaming industries. We want to be an active part changing this, including changing the perception that technology and gaming industries have working conditions that aren’t family-friendly. We need a diverse workforce to understand and develop products that attract global consumers. So, we’ve put an extra focus on attracting diverse talent and highlighting female role models in our employee branding across all our companies. For example, we’ve proudly sponsored Women in Tech (WIT) for the fifth consecutive year. WIT is an important initiative in the Nordics, inspiring women to choose a career within the media and tech industry, and this year we streamed it live on Viafree. To encourage young females to get interested in the digital world at an early age, we work closely with ‘Hello World’ arranging Hack Days at our local offices.
During EuroPride, our own multi-platform network, SplayOne, produced a campaign ‘Why I walk now’ with influencers who talked about the importance of showing support for diversity and participating in the parade.
Our people are the core and strength of our business
We believe that our people are the core and strength of our business. We want them to develop and thrive in their career, so we invest in them with continuous training, talent and leadership programs. Every year we perform an engagement survey (in the Nordic markets and the UK) and this year we had a higher response rate than ever before (86% compared to last year 76%).
Inspiring leadership and a well-managed team are essential factors for success. Key contributing factors to high team efficiency are: feeling respected by colleagues and managers, functioning cooperation and an open environment. We outperformed the benchmark in all these areas. The survey showed that most employees are happy with their leadership, and they believe their team is well managed. Overall, 94% reported feeling respected by their colleagues, and 89% said they cooperate well within their team.
We are proud of the commitment and energy that lies within MTG. 83% of employees enjoy going to work, 86% are proud to work for MTG, and 91% are willing to make an extra effort to make us more successful. Like any company, we have areas that need extra attention to make us even better, such as more information sharing, greater clarity when it comes to overall goals and more follow-up.
In our recruitment processes, we’ve taken extra measures to protect equal opportunities and ensure that we attract a diverse workforce, for example by posting our job ads in English and adjusting the language to attract diverse talent. Of all our employees 19% were new hires at MTG in 2018, with 7% women and 12% men. When it comes to internal recruitment and job promotions, our gender split is 39% women and 61% men.
We support work-life balance and continuously try to challenge ourselves and improve conditions, including offering flexible working hours and the possibility to work from home. In most markets, we use English as the official language for increased inclusion and mobility across markets and businesses. We encourage all genders to take parental leave. Looking at the gender split amongst our employees going on parental leave a total of 47% men and 53% women took parental leave in 2018. We have also started a pre-parental training in Sweden for employees going on parental leave to make sure they have information and feel supported by the company.
Safety and Security
At MTG, we recognise the importance of safety and security; it’s everyone’s responsibility. Our Risk & Security team develop the strategy which we all implement locally, creating a secure working environment. This strategy is designed to protect our business and company strategy, enable the business and ensure that, in case of interruption we can recover quickly with as little harm done as possible.
The Risk & Security team is responsible for the following areas:
- Business resilience;
- Crisis management and escalation;
- Personnel security, which includes travel security, security while working remotely and executive protection;
- Security incident recording, analysis, investigation and resolution;
- Content protection and anti-piracy initiatives – we continue to be members of the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance as well as the Nordic Content Protection organisation;
- Physical security and compliance with the physical security baselines;
- Management and application of insurance policies.
The IT Department takes care of information security in close collaboration with the Risk & Security team.
The Risk & Security team develop and deliver the Integrated Risk Management Framework, which is governed by the risk management policy, as well as group-wide trainings on relevant topics. The risk work streams dictate the governance structure which is made up of information security, security operations, resilience, IT security, content protection, people, regulatory and business risks.
The governance committee monitors the group-level risks and risk-related activities and oversees the implementation of controls. It also supports and controls the risk framework as well as providing guidance, and escalating issues to the MTG Board of Directors and the executive management.
The role of the audit committee is to evaluate and challenge the risk framework. They measure and evaluate the impacts of the work streams against set KPIs.
Throughout 2018, we’ve continued to improve event security, particularly at esports events. The Risk & Security team published event security guidance, and our Head of Security Operations provided security advice for 8 out of 21 esports events during 2018. The guide gives structured advice and a clear approach to all the different steps when planning and during the event. It includes detailed appendices about threat analysis and risk assessment among others.
The Co-CEO and Founder of ESL, Ralf Reichert, and Co-CEO of DreamHack, Marcus Lindmark, both agree that: “The safety and security of attendees, partners, and staff at our events is paramount. Therefore, we work very closely with venue security and local authorities to ensure we implement best practices in line with other sports and entertainment events.” Marcus adds, “We want everyone to be able to focus on the great experience they came for.”
Doing more
Our businesses influence millions of people every day, through our broadcasting channels, streaming platforms, radio networks, esports tournaments and LAN festivals, and games that we develop and publish. Through the variety of platforms and interactive spaces, we engage with audiences of different ages. We want to use our reach and competence to give back to the communities we interact with and contribute to the societies that are directly and indirectly affected by our products and services. During 2018, we donated and helped raise over 43 million SEK.
InnoGames supports ‘Hour of Code’
Computer science education is fundamentally important in the ever-developing digital world that surrounds us at home and at work. Every industry – and with it, every aspect of our modern lives – is increasingly impacted by technology, from education to wellbeing to the arts. Despite this trend, computer science is not taught in the majority of schools around the world. To fill this gap, InnoGames supports the ‘Hour of Code’ project, which teaches these vital skills to millions of students from diverse backgrounds worldwide.
Kongregate games in support of ‘Extra life’
Kongregate helps raise funds for a local children’s hospital every year through ‘Extra Life’ – an organisation that unites thousands of gamers around the world to play games in support of their local Children’s Miracle Network Hospital. In 2018, Kongregate raised over 18,000 USD for UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.
ESL collaborates with the University of York
ESL UK and the University of York launched the world’s first industry-backed module on esports content production. This milestone collaboration proves that esports is widely recognised as a rapidly growing industry and that more and more young people see esports as a career path they want to pursue. It also shows the high demand for a dedicated esports education in the industry that’s undergoing professionalisation with the ultimate goal of being on par with traditional sports.
DreamHack partners with ‘Save the Children’
DreamHack started a partnership with Save the Children as a Global Charity Beneficiary in May 2018. The ambition is to help Save the Children amplify their reach and provide support from within the esports community. The partnership had three main goals. Firstly, raise awareness of the brand to an audience that most likely isn’t aware of Save the Children’s work. Secondly, get players to join their stream team so that when streamers have events where all donations will go to charity, Save the Children can be a beneficiary. Last but not least, to spread the message across several continents through giving Save the Children space at esports events and LAN festivals as well as raising funds through a variety of activations, such as merchandise sales.
TV3, Viafree & Viaplay host Diabetes Gala 2018
The success of the Diabetes Gala continued in 2018 as TV3, Viafree and Viaplay live-broadcast the event on the World Diabetes Day for the second year in a row. The campaign raised over 7 million SEK that went directly to the Diabetes Foundation, but most importantly the campaign helped to spread information about diabetes and educate about the disease. 250,000 Swedes saw the gala concert in 2018.
MTG & Reach for Change
Change Leader Belinda from HeartWork
During 2018, MTG continued its support for Reach for Change and their quest to help social entrepreneurs develop solutions to pressing issues for children and youth. Throughout the year, Reach for Change supported 156 Change Leaders and had an impact on more than 350,000 children and youths. MTG ran its Game Changers campaign with Reach for Change for the 5th year with local collaborations and co-worker engagements in the Nordics.
