Stay true to yourself

‘’My challenge and objective are to add value for my people and business through the work I do. To enable people to develop and grow, to be engaged and energized at work.’’ Ruxandra is caring by nature. Curious how she translates this into her work as HR Development Manager in Romania, read her story below.

When I was 19 years old, I moved to Bucharest to go to University and to gain my first experience in the working field. From Back Office and Management Assistant roles, I grew in Human Resources taking different roles in the last 15 years.

I joined FrieslandCampina in 2017 in my current role as an HR Development Manager in Romania. I am responsible for multiple disciplines in HR: Learning & Development, Employer Branding and People Engagement.

I am especially passionate about Learning & Development, it’s an area where I don’t feel like it is work. It comes naturally to me. 

After a couple of months, I fell in love with the brand Napolact. It is one of our famous brands in Romania. I am really proud to see how it developed over the years. My role is to service our people that are creating, preparing, promoting, and selling these nourishing products of Napolact. In this way, I can contribute and make an impact on the brand and the people I love.

My challenge is bringing better employee experiences and projects to the table every year. Although I started this role with the same name, looking back at 5 years ago, the content of the role changed and grew organically together with the company and its people. At this time, HR consisted of organizing trainings, designing an onboarding process, and Employer Branding to participate in a job fair.

Bringing value through my work is what motivates me.

Nowadays, the range of tasks has been broadened. We are speaking about learning culture with blended programs, transformation programs, Employer Branding studies – done internally and externally, Employee Assistance Program within the Well-being stream and in general, actions with direct impact in business.

I am always asking myself: Am I bringing value through my work? Do I believe in what I propose through projects? Is the respective action focused on achieving the desired result? I am driven by goodness, contribution, authenticity, results, and to be connected with who I am, and this exercise is helping me in choosing where to put my energy.

These aspects of contributing and adding value are what Nourishing by Nature, the purpose of our company means to me. 

I believe that by re-creating the sense of belonging, proudness and by enabling our people to unleash their true nature we will grow as team and business.

However, my projects and work have results through others. People engagement is a great example of all the growing steps we did during the years and how we transformed. Together with the Management Team, Managers, and HR Business Partners, we are striving to keep our people engaged. An example here is the series of departmental workshops we are doing to create relevant action plans for each department. Each year the completion rate for this plan is around 85% – 90%.

‘’People Engagement is more than measuring a KPI’’

At the beginning of the year we defined what genuine and authentic engagement means for our people, and we decided upon the words "alive", "passionate", and "caring" behaviors displayed every day’. Other than measuring KPIs in people engagement, we strive to look at what people need to feel engaged and then we work on that specific needs to implement them.

One of my key success factors was that together we linked this in our internal engagement survey with the needs of people, and the needs of business and then we started to implement the output. We started from the 65-engagement index in 2018 and in 2021 we proudly achieved a score of 85. A specific yearly plan at the company level guided us with clear KPIs to be measured and constant communication around it.

I grew a lot during my time at FrieslandCampina, through the challenges and projects I owned. Next to that, I received and am receiving a lot of support from my manager and I have my stakeholders who provide me with constant feedback. I do not only receive local support, it goes beyond that. I highly appreciate the collaboration with colleagues from global countries while we are involved in different projects together, such as the Employee Journey on Onboarding, Team Cohesion, and the Wellbeing Community at the European level. Even when speaking about an international company, I really like the autonomy we have locally. Those aspects are crucial for my development.

I believe that the most relevant way of development is: ‘’you crumble, you fall but then you take the learnings, and you apply them in your next project, and you realize you’ve learned something new or you evolved

In my daily life, I value responsibility, trust, honesty, striving for excellence, commitment, authenticity, and integrity. But most of all, to unleash my nature, it is important for me to stay true to myself and my advice to others is to do the same.