International women's week: Julia plans for a fossil-free future
We
highlight International women’s day 8 March all week by presenting female
professionals working in some of Vattenfall’s markets and business areas.
Julia
Klossek is a portfolio planning engineer within Business Unit Heat Berlin
and also an empowerment ambassador in the empowerment program of the unit.
“In
my job it is my responsibility to develop ideas and to analyse
what kind of heat and power plant portfolio we want to have in the city
of Berlin. As a team, we are finding solutions on how to make the city’s
energy production fossil-free.
I
was always fascinated with engineering and energy. My childhood
was spent in a coal mining city. Most of my family worked in coal mines.
The fascination started when the coal mines closed and I began to understand
that there was an ongoing transitional process. This transition made me
study industrial engineering with a focus on energy and resource management
at university. Later on, I moved to Berlin to do my master’s there. I
stayed in Berlin and knew I wanted to work in the energy industry, which
made me come to Vattenfall. Their goal, fossil freedom, inspired me.
Another
reason why I decided to work for Vattenfall was the transition
occurring in the way heat is produced as well as the related cultural transition.
The focus is not only on fossil to fossil-free but also on how to change
from coexistence to cooperation and collaboration, and from problem to
solution focus.
This
cultural transformation is our goal at the empowerment program.
The change that we are aiming for is to create a work culture where the
focus is on the things that we can influence rather than the things we
can’t control. It’s about strengthening the empowerment of all employees
by a multi-methods-approach to increase engagement, motivation, change
competence and innovative spirit. It’s also about establishing a feedback
culture and that it’s acceptable to make mistakes and to learn from them
instead of being punished for them. It’s about psychological safety and
working together efficiently as a team. We are all learning together.
The
empowerment program exists because the successful transformation of Heat
Berlin requires strategical, structural and cultural adjustment. The transition
from fossil to fossil-free means that the way we work at Vattenfall has
to be changed too, as we have new situations, new challenges, and a constantly
changing environment to work with.
Being
an empowerment ambassador means to me that I am working with people that
find it as important as I do to have a positive attitude at work as well
as to influence other people to have a positive mindset too. I also enjoy
learning methods on how to deal with a constantly changing environment.
The empowerment program also gives me the opportunity to work with people
I usually do not work with, as different departments participate in the
program. This makes me feel more connected with Vattenfall.
The
program taught me to take responsibility for my own life and to have a
strong self-initiative instead of feeling like a victim of the circumstances.
It also made me aware of how important it is to have strong and trustful
relationships with people at work in order to manage conflicts more confidently.
It also taught me to be flexible, since working in Heat Berlin currently
means facing a lot of uncertainties regarding the optimal solutions for
fossil-free heat production.
While
some people still don’t see the necessity of this cultural transition
and are still only coexisting, an increasing number of people do like the
idea of empowerment at work and want to feel empowered themselves. These
people make me hopeful that change in our work culture is coming.’’