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CORBION ANNUAL REPORT 2017 Sustainability statements
There’s a lot more to Office Management than meets the eye… The team • Rosemarie den Dekker, Management Assistant, R&D • Karen Meijer, Management Assistant, Biochemicals & Strategic Marketing • Kirsten Schellhorn, Management Assistant, Food & HR • Ellen Sterk, Management Assistant, Site/Plant Management & Operations Gorinchem/Worldwide • Marion Paans, Management Assistant, Total Corbion PLA The task When it comes to keeping our office in Gorinchem running smoothly there’s never a dull moment. We manage calendars for our executives, we organize meeting rooms, lunches, travel, stationery, business gifts, cards, time registration, event planning…We’re a very close-knit team and we have to be, because if one of us isn’t around, we rely on the others to step up, take over, and get the job done. The challenge The fun part of this job is also its greatest challenge: multi-tasking and juggling many things at once. When all is going well (which it usually is!) our team is like a family of ducks, swimming calmly along the surface, yet paddling like crazy under the water! Working in Office Management you really have to be very service-focused and detail oriented. And of course you need to be well organized with a good working knowledge of the company and its people. Perhaps most importantly you need to understand people. We are one Corbion; but dealing with scientists can be quite different from dealing with engineers, or sales and marketing professionals, or indeed visitors from different companies and countries. Whoever it may be, we always try and do the job with a smile on our face. It really does make a difference. The outcome Naturally, we take great pleasure in a job well done. For example, there was recently a big event at Gorinchem that included 50 food customers. The day before the meeting our entire team was filling goodie bags, and on the day itself we were running around organizing everything from safety materials and parking spots to a nice venue for drinks afterwards. When you see events go very well, and our colleagues being so appreciative, well it makes it all worthwhile. At the end of the day we are one big team. The experience We learn a lot from each other’s experiences. We can also flag potential obstacles and problems to each other. There’s no doubt that the experience of physically working together in the same room is a huge plus – because our teammates then become our friends. But it also makes us more efficient in the service we provide: When you’ve been doing this job a while you tend to develop an intuition for people and situations, which often comes in handy. The future As a group we’ve only been physically together for three months now, so you could say we’re still in takeoff mode! If anyone in our business has a message, question, or request, they can always come to our department. Even if we don’t know the right answer ourselves you can be sure we’ll know a person who does… or at least try to figure it out!