Anna is part of Global Shared Services (GSS) in Poland that delivers tonnes of projects in Finance, IT, HR, Procurement, Risk and Compliance across all our markets. For the past 10 years, Anna has moved between various accounting, specialists and team leader roles. Now, she is part of the team that collects and reports all sustainability data and makes sure that it can be trusted. This means that Anna is one of the many colleagues who are critical in ensuring that Arla will succeed with our ambitious sustainability targets.
Anna lives with her husband and their 5-year-old daughter in Pruszcz Gdański, a small town near Gdańsk in Poland. After intense days at work, Anna enjoys doing crossfit workouts and training for the ferocious Runmageddon race.
From Accountant to Team Coordinator
Anna joined Arla in 2012 as an A2R (Account to Report) Accountant at GSS, where she was tasked with general accounting and month close, intercompany accounting, fixed assets/leasing, cost ac-counting, tax reporting, consolidation, and external reporting. The following seven years, Anna held various roles, such as Senior A2R Accountant, A2R Team Coordinator and BSR (Balance Sheet Recon-ciliation) Process Coordinator.
“I’m proud of all my roles! However, if I had to choose one, it would be the role which I held just after my maternity leave. I re-joined the A2R team as a BSR Process Coordinator. I got assigned to a challenging project about creating an overview of Arla’s accounts hierarchy, which is super complex as it includes a handful of different accounts,” Anna explains and continues:
“At the same time, I was working as a Team Coordinator for my A2R team, focusing on cooperating with the team and developing my soft skills. So, I was juggling two very different roles simultaneous-ly.”
Stepping out of the comfort zone
After gaining experience as a Team Coordinator, Anna became a Team Leader in the Purchase to Pay (P2P) department, which was not only a completely new role but also in an entirely different de-partment than A2R.
“I decided that it was time to step out of my comfort zone and become a Team Leader. It was scary but it also felt like butterflies in my stomach,"
Anna says and continues:
"As soon as I joined, I was faced with a big challenge as the team I was leading consisted solely of junior accountants who were transferring to other teams. So, I had to begin my role with a recruitment process, which I absolutely loved. We created a team of fantastic people, who stayed in Arla till today and progressed towards senior accountant positions.”
New learnings on sustainability
In 2021, Anna moved into yet another new area and became an ESG Reporting Specialist in a team that supports the entire process of data quality and documentation on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) data.
“We support our sites across markets in collecting sustainability data, such as energy consumption, waste and water consumption, health and safety. We also gather data from our suppliers about packaging and transport to calculate the progress on reducing Co2 emissions,” Anna explains.
“I had limited knowledge about sustainability, and I didn’t feel like an expert here, as I did in my previous roles. But I learned that it’s alright to admit that I don’t know something and simply do my best to learn and reach out to my colleagues to find the best solution. Luckily, I always have people to share knowledge and experiences with.”
