Who am I?

I’m a happy woman and when I’m not at work I enjoy working out and being out in my garden. In the summer, I split my leisure time between playing golf with my husband and gardening, which in the last few years has involved propagating and growing dahlias. This is what my garden looked like just before the frost hit. 

As well as my husband, I have two daughters. The older one has just left home to go to university in Örebro and the younger one is in her last year of school.  
  

My workplace 

I work in Holmen IT’s Central Applications department, where I’m in charge of coordinating the development and administration of Holmen’s Group-wide IT applications. My team of IT maintenance managers and IT specialists work with line managers and process developers to identify needs to improve existing processes and system support. We all want to make sure the tools that ‘just have to work’, like the intranet, time reporting, payroll, accounts, etc. function as well as they possibly can.  
  
Everyone has their own idea of what makes a system ‘as good as possible’ but a lot of our work has to do with keeping our IT environments secure, all so that all of Holmen's employees can do their job.  To achieve this, we also work closely with other Group functions such as the Holmen Finance Centre, Human Resources, Legal Affairs and Purchasing. 

 

So, what does an IT department manager do all day?   

A lot of it is about coordinating activities and information. Having follow-ups and briefings of various kinds with other IT managers and with employees and suppliers. Today, for example, I had an online meeting with one of our major system suppliers. We talked about how we, at the best possible way, can prepare ourselves for the next major system upgrade. It’s important to start producing documentation, like analyses of the current and desired states. In this way, we ensure that we know what we’re doing in the next step.   

At lunchtime, a colleague from Purchasing and I grabbed the chance for a ‘walk and talk’ along the river. A great way to check the status of our collaboration, especially since we work so closely together on a daily basis. I do check-ins with my staff this way too. Once a month, we go for a walk and talk about short-term and long-term personal targets and things that are going on at the moment, big and small. At this time of year, it’s even more important to get out into the daylight while there is some, and we think it works well as a format. Walking makes you creative in a different way, compared with sitting in front of the computer or in a meeting room. 

We’ve just had a minor reorganisation, so this afternoon all of Holmen IT moved around and swapped offices and floors. It was a good opportunity to get everyone together for an after-work pizza once things had calmed down again.

 

Why Holmen? 

After nine years at Holmen, I can say that this has been the period of my career where I’ve grown the most. Holmen has given me the chance to take on different roles and responsibilities, and I’ve seen and learned so much more than I thought I would when I applied for the job as a systems analyst. No two days are the same. It might sound like a cliché but that’s pretty much how it is. There’s always something new to get your teeth into and a chance to learn more and grow.  
  
When I was offered the opportunity to join Holmen’s leadership programme a few years ago, I also had the honour of meeting and getting to know a great group of colleagues from (almost) all of Holmen’s business areas. It was a good mix of participants who I probably wouldn’t have come into contact with otherwise. It was such a valuable learning experience.  

 

Finally

I’d like to take the opportunity to say thank you for the chance to write the Holmen employee blog. I hope it’s given you another piece in the ‘Holmen jigsaw’. Now I’m off to plan what we’re going to do for our department day next week, so from me it’s over and out...