Greetings from Alumni: Sari Ek-Petroff, HR director, Enento Group

In the third part of this autumn’s Greetings from Alumni series, we interviewed Sari Ek-Petroff, who works as an HR director at Enento Group. During her time at Hannes between the years 1999 and 2004, Sari worked as an HR manager.

Hi Sari, how are you?

Thank you, I am fine. It has been a busy fall with lots of interesting projects ongoing in building our culture, leadership and strategy forward for the future success. These are topics that truly energise me.

You work as an HR director at Enento Group. Can you tell us about your daily work and what is included in the responsibilities of an HR director?

Enento Group consists of different companies around the Nordic countries. In Sweden, you might know our brand UC, in Finland Asiakastieto, or in Norway Proff. We are listed on Nasdaq Helsinki.

In short, our business could be described as providing digital business and consumer information services. Our products are primarily used for risk management, finance, administration, and decision making as well as sales and marketing purposes.

Being the group HR director means an overall responsibility of all the people related matters with us in Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. In our strategy, we have four focus areas and one of them is “Empowered People”. This means having a learning organisation that enables and enhances a growth mindset, collaboration, excellent leadership, and wellbeing of our people. Our promises to our present and future people are that they can work with truly interesting topics where data intelligence is at the core in a workplace where sustainability is at the heart of everyone and in everything we do, where they can grow among other experts in a healthy working community.

In my daily life, the topics and projects can vary during the year but always on my agenda are organisational culture and resourcing topics, people and leadership development as well as the wellbeing of our people. For example, at the end of August, we had our annual Leadership Day with about 70 leaders in Helsinki learning, networking, and building the future success together and we had really interesting topics covered from AI to brain health. And of course, being a listed company, there are many mandatory processes to comply with different rules and regulations. This year, a big focus has been the rewarding and job framework matters to start following the upcoming EU Pay Transparency Act. Another new EU-related topic will be in the coming months the GSRD, very much linked to people matters as well. My daily work is very much with a Nordic perspective as I have team and executive leadership members both in Finland and in Sweden with whom I collaborate on a daily basis. And this Nordic perspective is really a great inspiration to me.

You have extensive experience in HR management in different organisations. How has the HR field changed and developed over the past 25 years?

HR as such has gone through many changes in general during these years, as in my mind a modern HR or people function is a lot less of an administrative function than it used to be. We are working much more like the title often says as  “HR business partners”, being a sparring partner to leaders and managers in people-related topics and working on organisational change topics, for example. Also, HR is seen more than before as a key partner for CEOs in planning for the future and part of the strategic future planning overall. Earlier the role was much more operational and short-term focus, in general.

But then I have to say, that I have been truly fortunate to have worked in organisations where HR and people topics have been always on the strategic agenda, not just being an administrative function. So, when I reflect back on the 25 years, yes, things have changed and for example wellbeing and culture have become more strategic topics than before, but the main things have been there always: leadership development, change management, and having the right talents and competencies in the company.

Hannes was one of your first work places with overall HR responsibility. What was the most valuable lesson you took with you when you moved forward from Hannes?

Collaboration and working together with leaders or partners especially at Hannes and when we in HR want to add value to the business, we also need to know the business and be interested in it. That is something I have carried with me throughout my career. And also, no matter what is your title or position, when you treat other people with respect and kindness, you will gain respect and trust yourself — and this is what I experienced at Hannes.

You have now been a Hannes alumna for 20 years. What is your favourite memory from your time at Hannes?

There are many fun memories, but maybe the warmest ones are linked to the Children’s Days we had every year, showing to our children where mothers and fathers spend their days (and sometimes also evenings). A Saturday when we invited our children to the office, had a fun programme and good food before going to the circus. And some years we also invited children from the children’s hospital to join us, which was really appreciated. From the professional side the I would say what I already mentioned before, the open and warm culture and people.

Hannes is cooperating with Päätös, a podcast focused on decision-making, for its fifth season this year. Inspired by the podcast, we would like to conclude this interview by asking you about decision-making — what would you say is the most significant decision you have made when it comes to your professional life?

This is a hard one. 😊 I would say in general it is to make decisions even if you do not have all the data or facts known and be bold trusting your heart. Situations when I have said “yes” to new challenges or projects, jumped into the unknown, are those kinds of situations, trusting that you will learn even if you don’t know everything right away.