Climbing the career ladder

When Helvijs Siubra was a young man in Latvia, he imagined having a career in business. With a subscription for Forbes Magazine and future dreams of having his own company someday, he attended the Banku Augstskola – the BA School of Business and Finance in Riga.

“I wanted to learn the basics of doing business. My studies also focused on innovation which suits me well. Even if I just talk with my family or are together with friends, my brain keeps coming up with ideas. It’s not because I try to think outside the box – I just can’t help myself,” he says.

At his second year at the Business School, it was mandatory to have an internship at a company for 3 months. Helvijs wrote down the names of major companies in Latvia who worked with food and drinks and sent them all an application offering his help. By coincidence, it turned out that Lantmännen Unibake’s fresh bakery business in Latvia – Hanzas Maiznica – was short of a marketing assistant.

“From the first moment I liked it there. My colleagues and my manager were very supportive. Usually as an intern you do a lot of boring stuff, but I was sitting in on meetings with customers and with external marketing agencies.”

Helvijs Siubra’s internship ended, but a few months later he was offered a job as a merchandiser at Hanzas Maiznica.

“I was still attending Business School at that point, so in the daytime I was having classes, and in the evening and in the weekends, I was driving around visiting supermarkets. It was 1½ years of hard work, but I enjoyed it and learned a lot. When I think back today, I remember that I loved the Unibake brand right from the beginning. There is something noble about making bread. It is so basic for humans.”

Raise your hand

As part of his studies, Helvijs Siubra both wrote his bachelor project and his master thesis with Hanzas Maiznica. His master thesis was about building an automated e-commerce platform for Unibake to reduce manual handling costs – a project that wasn’t implemented at the time but that he hasn’t given up on.

It's a priority across the Lantmännen Unibake organisation to develop employees through different career opportunities inside the company. Just because you start in one corner, it doesn’t mean that you stay in that corner. So, when Hanzas Maiznica suddenly needed someone who could manage an outsourced IT team, Helvijs Siubra put his hand up.

“It was my first international role working towards Finland and the Baltics, and it was the first time Lantmännen Unibake tried to align IT with business objectives. There was a lot of learnings – on both sides. I would often find myself in a room with a bunch of guys who all had

a technical background, and I would sometimes go: wait, wait, wait – what about the customers and their needs? It was a clash of perspectives, and it was exciting. I used my curiosity to ask all the questions they had not heard before.”

A program for talents

With Helvijs Siubra’s skills, work-ethics, and winning personality he one day found his name in Lantmännen Unibake’s global talent review program. From that talent pool, he was hand-picked to his current role as Business Process Manager working at Lantmännen Unibake International’s Head Office in Copenhagen where he today lives with his wife and little son.

“I’m grateful for the opportunity. I didn’t think that it was possible for me to reach to the level I am today. I work with colleagues from all over the world. A lot of us come from local Unibake offices where we have gained deep inside knowledge about specific business processes. When we combine those insights, something good happens,” he says.

Even though Helvijs Siubra still has career ambitions and wants to learn more, he is still busy absorbing the new workplace, a new country, and the new responsibilities as Business Process Manager.

“It is not a common thing to work for a company that focuses so much on their talents. Unibake knows that the real value of a company is its employees, and they spend time and resources on development programs. If you have the right mindset, opportunities will come in this company,” he says and finishes with a final salute to his managers on his journey so far with Unibake.

“They have all been very supportive. When I studied, and I asked for time off to attend classes or do an exam, they said okay. Today, if my kid is sick, or if we need to sort something out as a family, they say okay. You can have the right attitude as an employee, but without leadership there is no support. Throughout my time with Lantmännen Unibake, they have helped me find the right work-life balance. I think that has been one of the keys to my success with the company.”