‘I CONSTANTLY NEED CHALLENGES’: THE CAREER PATH OF SVITLANA DZENNYK, PRODUCTION DIRECTOR OF UKRAINIAN MINERAL FERTILIZERS

How did you become the Production Director of an industrial enterprise?

‘On-Call Technician and Equipment Technician’ is the first entry in my employment record book. I worked for an ore-dressing plant for the first 12 years, 7 of which were at a quarry. I was promoted nearly every 1 ½ to 2 years.

At first, my job was in procurement. In 2013, our enterprise became a platform to implement lean manufacturing, so I passed the test and became the first and only woman in the team. We were implementing the world’s best manufacturing practices and lean manufacturing tools from 5S to big projects to optimize the production processes that ultimately helped the enterprise save millions every year.

Each position gave me not only new opportunities but also required me to improve my skills. When I started working at the Performance Improvement Department, I realized that I lacked project management skills. Therefore, I completed a course and became a project and programme manager.

When I needed to master the physics and nature of the mining and quarrying process, I obtained a degree as a surface mining engineer. Today, I have four higher education degrees, a postgraduate training programme for the fifth profession, and a distance learning MBA that I’m currently taking.

Then, I worked for the international company Bel for a little over three years, but that was a quantum leap in my development. That was where we prepared and passed all sorts of international certifications together with the team: ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015, ISO 22000:2005 (ISO 22002:1-2009), OHSAS 18001:2007, ISO 19011:2011. At the same time, I gained the Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certification at the International Independent Board for Lean Certification (IIBLC) and the Six Sigma Green Belt at Sterling Business School.

If you want to improve or change something, you need to be well versed in this. As Production Performance Project Manager, I gained experience in people management, process optimization, repair management systems, and much more.

Therefore, I know very well what I am doing as a Production Director of Ukrainian Mineral Fertilizers. I was challenged by the simpler tasks of organizing workflow that I practically didn’t perform at all in my previous jobs. We have a small team here, so we must learn a lot about more mundane processes.

What are your goals as a Production Director of Ukrainian Mineral Fertilizers?

As we’re building Ukrainian Mineral Fertilizers from scratch, it lacks a production system, business process descriptions, and a decent employee engagement system. Therefore, my key goal in this position is to build those systems. This is what we’re doing now.

One of my first projects was to improve the labour protection system. To enhance the safety culture among our employees, we introduced behavioural safety audits and mandatory feedback for every employee.

If a person takes the correct measures, uses personal protective equipment, and maintains order at work, they will definitely get positive feedback. If we detect some negative points during audits, employees can independently analyse their actions and relevant risks. Managers only have to suggest the right idea.

Since 1 January 2021, we’ve rolled out a proposal submission system. It’s based on an internal currency—crystals. All the employees can earn crystals by submitting their ideas for improving production or making such proposals a reality. Employees can exchange a certain number of crystals for gifts from the catalogue. Gamification helps fix the current problems and improve production without any additional services.

Since December, we’ve also begun to hold monthly meetings with each shift. At those meetings, the management team talks about the company’s latest news and plans, gives the shift monthly feedback, and answers the questions which employees ask. This way, we avoid any misunderstandings and inform the team the right way.

In April 2021, we introduced a tagging system where employees use the traffic light principle to identify points of deviation from the baseline condition.

We also began testing a QR code system to keep track of finished products.

What is your approach to team management? Is it hard to manage a predominantly male team?

My approach to team management boils down to the following fact: I build trusting relationships with everyone, regardless of any positions, rather than point fingers. I’m now working a lot on this with the technical staff. If we have an incident, we look for the root cause. We don’t get personal even if there is a human factor involved. We look from the other side: if someone makes a mistake, then we’ve built this process in such a way that this mistake could be made. Therefore, we analyse problems and come up with corrective actions to make sure this mistake will never be repeated.

One of my professors used to say, ‘If you take care of people, people will take care of your processes’. Therefore, trust is my key principle.

At all of my previous jobs, most of my colleagues and subordinates were men. Therefore, it’s easy for me to work with them.

I tell each employee that we’re all in the same boat, so we’d better row in the same direction. I clearly understand that we can’t have an efficient workflow if we don’t have a good team.

All of our employees are equal in our coordinate system. If our actions are asynchronous, we slacken the entire system.

Do gender stereotypes still exist in the Ukrainian industrial sector?

In fact, they forced me to leave the quarry. I absolutely adored the job but had ambitions to move forward. I can’t just work with the same processes all the time. I constantly need challenges.

However, it was obvious that the position I held at that time was at the top end of that enterprise. There were no female chief quarry engineers, and they’re unlikely to appear shortly. Enterprises founded in the 1960s still suffer from these stereotypes. And this is also the case with the heavy industry.

I don’t think gender matters at all. What matters is what value you can bring to your company, what skills you can contribute, and why you are there in the first place. This is my point of view.

What advice would you give to women embarking on their careers in ‘male’ sectors?

Here’s a simple piece of advice: forget your fear. Listen to your inner voice. And if you feel that this position is yours, just do what you need to do. My parents always said, ‘If you want it, go for it’. I’d like to advise all women to stick to the same concept: if you want it and you feel that you have the heart for it, you just need to start somewhere. Even if you fail, it’s still better than spending your whole life thinking about the things you could have done. You can learn anything—you just need to convert your Desire into Doing Things.