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You always feel this collaborative mood here

Alena Hollo, Tribe Lead in the Baltics
Alena Hollo, Tribe Lead in the Baltics

Alena is based in Estonia and currently works as a Tribe Lead in the Baltics. Her daily tasks are to be continuously connected with people: support and grow her Tribe team, contribute to the Product Development Leadership Team, check and grow the areas that she is responsible for in her tribe. It all comes down to enabling boosting product development to provide the best products and services to customers.

Every day Alena works on user experience, software automation, quality assurance, competence leads and bringing up new developers. It’s constant juggling between the different areas and being the glue between different parts of the organisation and her team.

What makes SEB a friendly and welcoming environment to work in?

“On your first day, you have a smiling person waiting for you, ready to help you and prepare you for what life is like at SEB. You always feel this collaborative mood here of people always being willing to help. The teams in SEB really represent all the important values of the company and I’m personally inspired to work with such excellent people striving towards the same goals.”

In what ways do colleagues show respect for each other?

“It comes down to the basics. If you walk around the office everybody greets you and smiles at you. People always try to help you and if they can’t, they will direct you to the right person or they will do the research to answer your question.”

What does the phrase ‘always curious, always growing’ mean to you personally?

“For me it means that we have the opportunity to develop ourselves. We can take initiative and move towards our ideas, and it’s always encouraged. People coming in as newbies or novices can choose what they want to do at SEB and they are supported in their journey.”

What has been the biggest driver of your personal development at SEB?

“I would say it is curiosity. For me personally I want to know how things work, see the big picture and in some cases go into the smaller details. I can always find something that’s interesting to me and then follow that passion because it’s always supported. I’ve been here for a long time, but I know there’s still so much to learn and so many opportunities to come.”

How do you feel challenges create opportunities at SEB?

“When you have a challenging problem to solve, that’s where you have the most innovative and interesting solutions. Those solutions then end up solving more than one problem in the future. It’s easy to give up, but if we take a step back and have perspective, we can see opportunities in those challenges.”

What role do you think SEB has in positively impacting society?

“One of my core beliefs is that SEB has great importance in helping society to innovate. We are enabling ideas to come into existence, through the products and services we provide. I started to think about these moments, like kids who need a fast transfer of money to buy train tickets or families buying their first homes, there are so many items we are creating in our financial sector that enable people to thrive.”

What innovation do you hope is coming in the future?

“If we talk about the finance and sustainability area then: we can use telepathy to meet our customers’ needs; with their permission of course.”