Sofia Gunnmo
Department : Corporate Quality, Environment, Health & Safety, Aarhus, Denmark
Education : Master of Science in Business Administration, Jönköping International Business School, Sweden
Current job:
Within the Corporate Quality, Environment, Health & Safety department we also work with tasks related to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). I’m part of the project group for the CSR Report 2008, which is a cross-functional group with members from my own department, marketing, communication and representatives from UK. I joined the group at the perfect time just as the work for this year’s report was about to commence. I have been information responsible for the Human Rights chapter, which was very exciting as I got to talk to people from the whole organisation; from a dairy manager in Poland to the marketing senior director in Dubai to a senior vice president for a business unit. Among other things there are also ongoing work tasks related to layout discussions, proof reading and translations. It is a lot of fun to see the whole process slowly moving forward sentence-by-sentence, picture-by-picture and I’m excited for the day to come when the report finally is printed and I have it in my hand, which will closely match my last day in this position.
My second major assignment is that I am to create an evaluation/audit plan to be able to follow up on how Arla is performing when it comes to CSR issues. This is definitely a challenge and I am happy to have supportive colleagues because I do get very stuck now and then. While being challenging it is also a very interesting assignment and it allows for me to be creative and gain an understanding of the company and the various challenges we are facing in the different countries where we are present.
Why Arla:
In the beginning of 2008 I had no thought about having Arla as my future employer but that changed very quickly after meeting the F15 program project manager. She told me about the program and it really caught my attention, the idea about being able to work abroad and change position three times sounded perfect in my ears as I wasn’t 100% sure what I wanted to do. And as a bonus, I would get 13 colleagues to experience it all with. But it wasn’t just the program that caught my attention, so did Arla. I don’t know why I had never even considered Arla as a potential employer until then, as looking at it now it really matches what sort of company I was looking for. Arla is a global player while at the same time being “close-to-home” with products that I’m willing to put my name behind. Through the recruitment process, the more people that I met that represented Arla, the more I felt it being the right choice as people here are very friendly and welcoming. I also saw great development opportunities, both through the different placements but also after the program, as Arla is such a large company. So Arla went from being just a milk company to a part of my future.
Future:
I have a great feeling of the future, both the very near future and for the future overall. I have got two more exciting placements left where I’m hoping one of them will be in a place like Poland which is strategically very important, alternatively a place like Canada as it would be interesting to see to what degree my Scandinavian perception of Arla matches theirs. During the coming years I will also have the pleasure of spending more time with my great colleagues in the F15 programme in exciting and fun team trainings. I believe the F15 programme to be a great springboard for my future career as it gives me broad knowledge of the company and there are also great personal development possibilities. There are plenty of opportunities out there; it is just to grab them.