Essity, opening doors and creating international opportunities

Shannon Heath works as a Junior Controller for Essity, a world leading global company in health and hygiene. Essity’s purpose is to break barriers to well-being and contribute to a healthy, sustainable and circular society.

Shannon initially started in the Finance sector of the Go! Graduate Program, before moving on to her current role. The program gives you the opportunity to accelerate in a real job with real responsibilities from day one. At the same time, you’ll be able to explore Essity through rotation, project assignments, learning modules and networking with colleagues located at different sites around the world.

- I was finishing university in June and started looking for graduate schemes because they were recommended by one of my tutors. He said they were quite beneficial to get you into the working world. I wasn’t looking for anything specific, I was just seeing what was out there. The Essity GO! Program seemed to be quite varied and interesting with a clear outline of all the things that would be involved. I wanted something that was different and exciting, and I liked the look of it, so I applied and got in. It’s lived up to what I was expecting and actually exceeded my expectations in the end.

Shannon loves the friendly, caring, and collaborative culture that Essity has.

- Everybody is willing to help regardless of their role. I think the best thing about Essity is that I truly enjoy my job and the people I’m surrounded by. I feel so lucky to get up and be excited about my job every day. If you’re unsure about whether to apply for the GO! Program, just do it! It opens up so many doors. I got to work and live in Paris for a year and got the opportunity to have a job within Essity at the end of the GO! Program. You work with and within different departments. Currently I’m helping with Production Planning for two months and I’m studying CMA through the company. People at Essity are so supportive of your ideas and the opportunities you want to take.

For the second year of the Programme, Shannon was able to move to Paris and work on the financial side of one of the company’s marketing teams which was different to what she was used to.

- I got to see the whole process from start to finish. Once the GO! Program was finished I could decide if I preferred the operational side of Finance or the marketing side.

As a Junior Controller, Shannon’s job is varied and no two days are ever the same.

- I’m a Junior Controller at one of our manufacturing sites, and because there are three of us in the team, we split up the responsibilities. We have a Unifibres department, two paper making machines and seven converting lines. I deal mostly with Unifibres, as well as capital expenditure, the energy on site (doing all of the invoices, the meter readings and my month end adjustments) and I work closely with procurement on open orders. I have lots of different daily and weekly tasks I need to do, like monitoring paper usage and productivity on site. CapEx is a big part of my job as well. I get involved in all of the projects from a finance perspective which is really interesting.

Writer: Gabrielle Akal

About Shannon:

Name: Shannon Heath
Title: Junior Controller
Education: Leeds Trinity University - Accounting and Business
My favorite innovation: “My favorite innovation is the internet. It is a huge source of information and knowledge and I think we wouldn’t be as advanced as we are without it!”