Bringing Shared Services to Life in Europe: Employee Service Center Opens in Birmingham, UK
Posted on: 19/04/2016
Creating the Fuel to Invest in our People and Brands
At Mondelēz International, we are transforming to win so that we can create the fuel to grow and reinvest in our people and brands.
To achieve these goals, we are creating Mondelēz International Business Services (MBS), a new global business service organization which will focus on delivering sustainable value to our organization for years to come by simplifying how we work, keeping us cost competitive, and building scale and new capabilities.
The European arm of MBS’s primary location will be Birmingham, UK with an additional presence in Warsaw, Poland
In MBS, we work with incomparable speed and flexibility. We believe in the power of bold actions. And, we apply our beliefs daily—achieving great things through collaboration, confidence, and creativity.
a word from our Senior VP for HR
Andrew Gibson, Senior VP for Human Resources
"We are excited about the opening of the Employee Service Centre.
We've built a dedicated team on-site in Bournville who bring strong functional expertise, diverse language capability and country understanding, so we can ensure we offer a service that will work for all countries involved.
The new Centre offers a contemporary way of working and operating, as colleagues will be able to get access to HR information in a much easier and simpler way and line managers will have up to date information on their teams."
The jobs
We will be adding a broad range of exciting Business Services Center opportunities spanning from early career to management level positions. We are searching for administrative and recruitment professionals to join this newly-created and innovative team and help bring this new venture to life!
Mondelēz International in Europe, the Uk, and Poland
When it comes to spreading joy, Europe is a great place to be. We’re number one in Chocolate and Biscuits, and have a leading position in Gum and Candy, with 25 brands over 100 years old across our portfolio. What’s more, roughly 40% of our global revenue comes from our 35 markets across Europe.
The UK contributes hugely to the overall MEU performance, and is home to one of our most iconic brands, Cadbury, as well as loved brands such as Halls and Ritz. We have several sites through the country, with the main corporate headquarters in Uxbridge, London, and a range of manufacturing sites from Sheffield, to Bournville, Birmingham, to Crediton.
Equally, Poland, is one of our leading markets. This key market is continually growing and manufactures a host of iconic brands, including Cadbury, Oreo and Milka.
We have operated in Poland since 1992 and during that time we have developed an extensive and unique knowledge of our consumers’ eating needs and habits.
We have several sites across Poland, with the main corporate headquarters in Warsaw, and – again – a range of manufacturing sites through the country, from Bielany Wrocławskie to Jarosław.
People Profiles and Testimonials
To get an insight from some of the fantastic people already working in these teams and locations, click our colleagues names below.
Olga Kowalczyk
Talent Acquisition Specialist, Warsaw
"My journey at Mondelez has started about 10 months ago. Prior to Mondelez I have worked in one of the recruitment agencies that specialized in direct search. My background in general is quite international- I lived and studied in Manchester for about 5 years and was always attracted to a multicultural environment.
When I moved back to Warsaw I needed to start a search for a new professional challenge from scratch! The search criteria were clear to me; a role that would allow me to use English on daily basis, I wanted to gain exposure to international markets, dynamic working environment and finally focus on recruitment. When, I saw an opportunity to join a talent acquisition souring team at Mondelez I did not hesitate for a second!
The Warsaw office has about 300 employees and still growing- my first impression was that it’s not only big but also has a positive energy as it’s super colorful- you can actually feel the JOY when entering the office. If that is not enough you can always have a bite of one of a delicious Milka chocolate!
I do not regret coming back to my home town- for any of you that do not know Warsaw yet I can summarize a few words: green, delicious & fun!
Green: Being a fast developing city Warsaw still remains a very green city; we have a lot of beautiful parks and during summer time we also can enjoy a drink on the beach nearby the Vistula river.
Cuisine:The thing that I love the most about Warsaw is the culinary experience – it’s a city that loves international cuisine so the choice of restaurants (Thai, Indian, Turkish, Italian….) is enormous! So if you think Poles are only about Pierogi there is far ….far more to experience!
Escape for a weekend: If you need a weekend away from the city center you can always escape for a trip to a different beautiful Polish town like Cracow, Gdansk or Wroclaw by train... or you can simply catch a plane as we have 2 airports nearby.
However, my recommendation would be to say in Warsaw for a weekend and make sure you also experience the Warsaw nightlife!"
Sam Sparrow
European Workforce Administration Lead, Birmingham
"I started my career in Mondelez 24 years ago! I joined Cadbury as a graduate and my role was to forecast the sales of all the products made in our Bournville factory – a real job with real impact from day 1.
I got involved in many projects too – graduate projects but also projects like working with a team mapping the cocoa process end to end and building a dashboard of KPIs for each board director for their area and working with a customer’s logistics team to jointly manage their inventory. I then worked in Customer Marketing – out with the account managers presenting and working with our largest customers and then working with consumer marketing to ensure we were matching and maximising consumer and customer opportunities.
After this I moved into brand marketing, somewhere I never thought I’d work, and worked on several brands over about 6 years. I loved this time and particularly liked hearing consumers insights first hand.
Then came my move to HR , again somewhere I never expected to work, via a change management role and project. It was in this role that I really made the move to managing a big team and developed my team leadership skills and man management capability. During my time in HR, now over half my career has been in HR, I’ve been an HR Manager, set up and led a centralised resourcing team in the UK, been a Talent Lead working in a centre of excellence and then just before my new role lead the HR Solutions Team accountable for all the transactional elements of HR delivery including administration, payroll, reporting, C&B and Employee relations. And now I’m leading the WFA (Workforce Administration) team in our newly established Employee Services Team here in Bournville.
Working in a shared service way is new and different – the thing I notice is that it brings a real energy and buzz as the metrics are visible and we respond to them constantly in the moment. The team hasn’t been together long but its bonded well already to work together to deliver and have some fun along the way.
I love working in Bournville – it’s a factory site which makes some of the businesses most iconic brands and you can smell it every time you come into work which is a simple but effective reminder about what we do as a business – make and sell snacks in this case chocolate. Everyone who joins here always comments on how friendly everyone is. Bournville is increasingly diverse in terms of those who work here as we have an R&D chocolate centre here as well as some European hubs including Employee services of course!
I live into the country only about 10 miles from Bournville but having Birmingham city centre so accessible is great for shopping and socialising. Its also a good location in the UK – at the centre- as getting to London in a day is fine and getting to other parts of the UK is easy too; plus the airport makes travel further afield easy. There are many different types of areas in and around Birmingham to suit all tastes."
Interested?
Are you interested in joining these teams and starting an ambitious journey to deliver exceptional customer service to our colleagues? If so, visit our career opportunities section and search for our vacancies in the UK and Poland
here.