Tarja Konttinen is a Tribe Lead who works on regulatory reporting. In addition to planning the overall direction taken, she has a purely HR role as a leader. In her long career at OP, Tarja has learned to treat her staff as individuals – for her, a good leader is an enabler of success, who provides the right blend of support and sparring.    

Tarja’s work has always reflected her interest in people. Her long career at OP began in 1999, when she joined as a supervisor and expert intern program. During training, she learned to see the world through the eyes of bank staff and tasted management of a medium-sized bank in Salon Seudun Osuuspankki, before taking on a central trade financing role with OKO. At the end of her traineeship, Tarja began work at OP as an Account Manager in fund management.      

– Being an Account Manager gave me a broad overview of banks – I toured banks, training staff in asset management products such as mutual funds and life insurance. After five years, I began to lead an internal help desk providing support services for bank employees. From there, I moved to reporting, which is what I still do in a sense. 
   
Reporting is a vantage point   

Tarja’s tribe engages in regulatory reporting on behalf of banking companies across OP Financial Group. Reporting tasks provide a comprehensive overview of OP’s services.      

– Every banking product created by the businesses flows through us.    

Half of Tarja’s working hours involve the leadership of three teams with a total of nearly 30 experts. As a Tribe Lead, she is also in charge of the Regulatory Reporting tribe, which is divided into three line organisations. This involves tasks such as target-setting and budgeting of the tribe’s production and development costs. Alongside teams and stakeholders, she creates joint roadmaps guiding the work of developers and content specialists.     

   A good leader provides individual support and motivation   

Tarja has learned a great deal from her long career at OP. For her, the key characteristic of a leader is the ability to see people as a whole, rather than just through their work. Tarja feels that she can foster team members’ job satisfaction in a number of ways. She is a builder of networks who pushes processes forward, while ensuring that experts can focus on their core competencies.   

– Leadership is a kind of customer service; I’m here for my staff, supporting their task accomplishment as well as possible. 

There have been several turning points in her career. Many changes have brought both successes and the need to pause and take stock.      

– Some transformations have been painful – for example, organisational changes often involve a human perspective. The necessity for them has been easier to see in retrospect. Such moments have made me proud of the final push that led to good results. 

Tarja feels that she has developed as a leader along the way.    

– In this game, the strongest competencies are the product of experience. A leader’s task is to enable success. This doesn’t mean ‘spoonfeeding’ staff, but providing individual motivation and support – seeing what works and for whom.   

   OP provides opportunities for development and growth

Tarja draws inspiration from working for a technology-oriented community.      

– A lot is happening in OP Financial Group just now – the cloud migration and AI are impacting strongly on reporting as well as other areas. We’re actively developing regulatory reporting, despite its strict regulatory framework; our software developers boldly try out new practices on their own initiative. 

Changes also create challenges. Tarja points out that honest discussion is helpful during times of transition.   

– I think that it’s important to consider why something is being done and what we want to achieve as a work community. In my long career, I’ve seen many clearly good things come from changes, even painful ones. Learning new things also brings temporary discomfort. It’s best to be sympathetic toward this, wherever possible.  

Tarja praises OP’s competence development culture. She gives the Software Academy concept as an example – training can be flexibly planned around work. She recently completed data courses via the Academy. Next, she aims to train in testing and quality management as part of Quality Assurance processes. Tarja points out that opportunities for self-development are one of the best aspects of working at OP.      

– OP has always been a place for realising your potential – there are lots of career opportunities. That’s partly why I’ve been happy here for so long. I sign up to OP’s values and appreciate its investment in Finland. The idea is to keep services and decision-making here, which is great.