Pauliina Kuusisto is a twenty-year veteran in Olkiluoto
- The time has passed surprisingly quickly, Pauliina Kuusisto begins. She is talking about her career of 20 years in Olkiluoto. She celebrated the anniversary in May. Kuusisto’s journey in TVO Group cannot be described as same old, same old. What started as a summer job in office work, has taken her through several detours to her current position as Development Manager in charge of TVO’s strategy.
Pauliina Kuusisto’s dream job as a child had less to do with nuclear power plants and more with banks. In her childhood in the 1980s, there were still plenty of small bank branch offices in Finland with clerks whose work seemed fascinating.
- I too, wanted to become a lady working in a bank, Kuusisto smiles.
This thought carried through the years beyond her childhood, to some extent, and was partly the reason for Kuusisto switching from senior secondary school to business college and then further into University of Applied Sciences (UAS). In both, her major subject was marketing. She completed her studies swiftly, spending just two years for what should have been a four-year UAS Degree. And her dream came true, as well. She started working in the Leonia Bank already during the last summer of her studies.
When one door closes another opens
She loved working in the bank, but the whole sector was undergoing a radical change. The logos changed on the walls several times. And with the sector heading towards less branch offices rather than more and cooperation negotiations a repeated occurrence, the termination of her employment was not really the end of the world for Kuusisto. Especially as it only took a week for her to find a new job. A short, fixed term position to cover a sickness leave in the local telephone network company came up at just the right time. Placed in Eurajoki, she was already approaching Olkiluoto.
Kuusisto was not really familiar with Olkiluoto and the companies on the island although she did grow up around here. A friend from Uni who had ended up working for Posiva tipped that there might be an opening for a summer job. It was a good tip and resulted in Kuusisto shaking hands on a summer job deal the very same week. At the time, in May 2004, she certainly did not have a clue of how long her future employment period would be. Not even when she found her job not only interesting, but also versatile from the very beginning.
- My duties included all kinds of secretarial work, paper pushing and quite a lot of substituting for others, as well, she reminisces. In those days, Posiva was far from what it is today. The number of personnel was about 30 and excavation work for ONKALO® had not even started yet.
Moving on to procurement
Her work at Posiva did not come to an end after the summer, but she was offered a position covering for a maternity leave. The scope of her duties developed as well, and in addition to regular office work, she also participated in budgeting and cost monitoring, for example. Taking a few shortcuts, Kuusisto who had originally been hired to the research side of the company gradually made her way to procurement. And that is where she spent the longest stint of her career with the TVO Group. First as an assistant and later as a Coordinator of Procurement.
In 2015, her access card to Posiva was replaced with one of TVO. That was because of a fusion of all the Business Support Services of the Group. The organisation changed, the work not so much – at least, not at once.
- At first my duties were exclusively related to Posiva, but later I joined the EPR project for the testing and commissioning stage and became the main user for procurement in the project.
Her career progressed in the procurement organisation a bit like it had earlier when working for Posiva. When Pauliina expressed interest in something new, she was quite quickly offered an opportunity to do that new thing.
- That has indeed been one of the factors that I have always appreciated in Olkiluoto. Opportunities have been given to those who have voiced an interest, Kuusisto ponders.
In April 2018, Kuusisto become the Accounts Manager in Business Support Services and she also carries out the duties of Development Manager for Procurement.
Strategic move
Kuusisto joined her current organisation of Business Development just as the Covid epidemic was about to start, in February 2020. This again brought new challenges with the maintenance and coordination of the strategy process and the introduction of the strategy into practice as well as associated training included in her duties, for example.
- What I like in my current job is working on a long-term plan of what we want to be in the future as a company, including the steps needed to reach that goal, she sums up.
The big difference compared with her previous positions is that instead of one organisation her work now covers the entire TVO Group. Her versatile experience from many different sides of Olkiluoto has been of great advantage in that. And as a result of the versatility of her career, her own work has been interesting from day one.
- Throughout my career I have had the opportunity to work with new things and I think that is quite typical of TVO. I also consider it to be good leadership, giving opportunities and listening, she says.
Pauliina wants to encourage also other employees of the TVO Group to not be shy about sharing their thoughts with the line managers.
- My own experience certainly is that there are often opportunities on offer, she praises.
No to exclusively working from home
The Covid epidemic we mentioned earlier was a difficult time for the extrovert Kuusisto.
- Just staying at home terrified me at first. But in the end, we got through it. And since then, I have learned to also enjoy the benefits of working from home. Needs must.
After the Covid period, her goal has been to work at least a couple of days every week in the office in Olkiluoto.
- And when I am here, I want to spend most of my day in discussions with different people. I consider that important in my own role.
Kuusisto also praises the flexible working hours model which she has utilised almost since it was first introduced. It further increases the flexibility of one’s own schedules.
Kuusisto tells that she exercises actively in her free time. She enjoys running and walking, and last year got herself an e-pedelec fat bike clocking up a whopping 2300 kilometres on it during the year. A big part of this came from rides between Rauma and Olkiluoto, as Kuusisto is an avid commuter cyclist.
Relationship even longer
Kuusisto’s career in Olkiluoto is certainly a lengthy one, but not as long as her relationship. Pauliina found her partner already quite young, in the never-forget year of 1995. In those days, the youth in Rauma searched for true love walking around the town centre, the Tinder of that time, albeit an IRL version. One faithful night she accepted a ride with a young man called Tomi. This became a bit of habit for them, and they both still like to travel by car. Every now and then they will just decide to take the car for a spin around the countryside for a couple of hours.
Story: Ville Kulmala
Photos: Tapani Karjanlahti