Meeting with Paulina Jurkiewicz, Factory Director, member of the board – L’Oréal Poland

Paulina Jurkiewicz : I have taken the position of plant Director in Poland in April 2014. My career at L’Oréal Poland started in the second half of 2000 when I joined the Purchasing team as a trainee. During the last 14 years I had the pleasure to work in several departments and positions in the plant: Supply chain Department, Flow Department and Production Units.  It was a great adventure and a big challenge because of my academic background. I graduated in Romance philology and from that perspective I was mainly prepared to teach the French language in school. Supply Chain & Operations became my passion that I discovered and developed in L’Oréal. To complete my experience I did post-graduate studies in Supply Chain Management at the Main Economic School in Warsaw. All of that was possible because I had the chance to work with great managers and wonderful teams that supported me in my personal and professional development over the years.

Paulina Jurkiewicz : From an industrial perspective Central Europe is a very dynamic, fast developing and competitive region. The big international industrial players bring very advanced production technology to the market that demand highly qualified specialists in several technical domains. Technical schools are still developing and unfortunately not as fast as the demand of the market. Under these circumstances, attracting and retaining well-trained specialists becomes one of the big challenges. Therefore, trainee programs, talent development programs and good employer branding are now a priority for Kosmepol. We invest a lot of time, energy and resources to develop the programs that address these needs. At the same time my challenge is to make the plant an attractive place to work for people with different profession background because I strongly believe that cultural, professional, social and human diversity is one of the keys of success.

Paulina Jurkiewicz : At L’Oreal we believe in the power of diversity and I stick to that with all my heart. I think that diversity of gender, experience and origin brings a lot to business management. Different sensitivity and different perspectives of every single person make the picture bigger, richer and more colorful. By seeing more with different eyes, I believe that we are able to take more conscious, better decisions.

I have the pleasure to manage a team where men and women are equally represented. It is a great team with a mix of different personalities and perceptions that together has successfully managed several challenging business situations.  What could the economic performance of the factory be with a different gender mix? I have no idea; I know that our performance at present is good and that the people like to work in Kosmepol, so our gender configuration just works!

Paulina Jurkiewicz : From my personal perspective and observations the first obstacles are inside of us women. Some women hesitate before taking a new position or challenge if they are not 100% sure that they will perform. Sometimes we need to be “pushed” or convinced by someone that we are ready for the next step in our career. At least it was my case – I had the chance to have good, supportive and determined managers.

The second point is work-life balance. We are managers and leaders but we are also wives and mothers. Therefore the fear of losing work-life balance is big. I think to empower the leadership of women – and men –, to help them build and keep confidence, you have to ensure an environment of equal treatment and performance evaluation, to encourage dialogue between employees and managers and to provide transparency at each level.

Interview by Christina Hillebrand (L’Oréal) and Marie Donzel, for the EVE blog, with the involvement of Stéphanie Oueda & Sonia Denoyer (L’Oréal).