Meet Emmi Takala, HR

“I will always remember my first project; I was just a trainee when we won the SAP Quality Award competition in the innovation implementation category. It was so cool!”

Emmi works in Hiab’s Human Resources team and a rewards team spanning three business areas; Hiab, Kalmar and MacGregor. All of these business areas are part of Cargotec Corporation. Before starting at Hiab, Emmi joined Cargotec as a summer trainee and continued working part-time while studying Management and Organization at the Turku School of Economics. Emmi is passionate about lean thinking, data and innovating in clean processes – not to mention good food with good friends.

“My HR trainee position completely changed my view of Human Resources. Actually, I never intended to become an HR person. I started out in an HRIS (Human Resources Implementation System) project and was immediately fascinated by the combination of HR and information systems. My summer trainee position was an eye-opener, introducing me to the variety of HR tasks. I also understood the growing role of information and knowledge in HR — and that I want to be part of it.

During my time at Hiab, I have had the opportunity to work on various projects. For my latest project, involving the implementation of new sales intensive models, I worked for two months in the US. I reviewed the salary and compensation structures and helped the local management team to utilize the global benchmark data. I am delighted by our international diversity at Hiab. Other team members come from countries such as the US, China, Finland, Poland, Ireland, and Sweden.   

My favorite days at Hiab involve problem solving – I like to research problems and identify causal connections. In addition, I think it is critical that all employees are treated equally. My mission is to enable objectivity by bringing data and facts to decision making. However, data should never be taken for granted. Data is interesting, but is worthless if it cannot be used. It becomes valuable when it helps us to make better and fair decisions.

I am curious to learn about how digitalization will shape our business, which has so far been very traditional. From my perspective, technology is enabling our company to become more varied – many issues have already changed and are sure to keep changing.”