PolyPeptide Group: "We focus on competences"

We at MINE love to inspire people by telling stories about inclusion and diversity. This month, we bring the spotlight on one of our member companies that succeed in working with these values. Polypeptide Group is a chemistry company which particularity is to employ 275 people from 27 different nationalities in Malmö. We met with Sergey, department manager in production, and Jacob, global head of human resources, and we talked about current challenges, inclusive recruitment, international competencies, and the benefits of diversity in the workplace.

In these uncertain times, Polypeptide Group is an inspiring example of how to get through a crisis by playing by its rules. The company works with the pharmaceutical industry and produces an active substance for drugs. The peptides they create cover a large spectrum from cancer treatment, women diseases, diabetes and other illnesses. Recently, they also started to help with the development of a vaccine for COVID 19 and they consequently work more than before. Currently, the main challenge of the company is to keep up with the right capacity, which is a positive issue, and according to Jacob, “quite rewarding in a way, to make things people benefit from”.

The company employs academics with higher education and tries to keep the employees in a constant improvement mood. Sergey moved from Armenia to Sweden in 2003 and graduated with two master’s degrees in Biology and Innovation Management from Lund University. He thinks that it is important for people not to do the same things day after day: “The work itself in production is super interesting, we don´t have the chance to get bored. In the production department, we also work with analysis, paperwork, quality improvement, different projects”. The recruitment process focuses on candidate competencies and does not depend on other minor factors. As Jacob explains: “The knowledge is important. If you know chemistry, it is not important that you speak flawless Swedish or flawless English. All that matters is that you can understand and pick up the idea”. Sergey agrees with this point of view: “I myself perform interviews when we employ people and we don´t look at all at the nationality or the background. For us, it doesn´t matter. We look at the CV, we speak to the person and if he or she can do the job, it is ok for us. We focus on competences, otherwise, we could not have such diversity in the company”.

If there is no need to have a perfect level of Swedish, a minimum is still required, but it does not seem to be a big obstacle in the recruitment process. The workplace can also be an opportunity to acquire and improve the language skills, according to Sergey: “Here in the production department, you cannot do something wrong. You need at least to understand what you read, understand what other people say, and make sure they can understand you. But you develop language during the work. If I interview a candidate and see that their Swedish can be better and that they are really good at what they do, I know that they can develop the language and after six months work 100% in Swedish. I don´t want to refuse to hire a candidate because of the language and, therefore, break their dreams. I also developed 50% of the Swedish here”. The particularity of Swedish as the main language in a company that hires that many different nationalities are quite unusual when a lot of companies opt for English as the workplace language. But Jacob affirms that the working language is Swedish and Sergey specifies that there are people who do not speak English so you cannot rely only on this language.

On the other side, practicing Swedish seems to help a lot in integrating better in the society and in the workplace. “When you come to Sweden, there is one important thing: you have to integrate. And you cannot integrate if you don´t get a joke if you don´t get the possibility to come to the Swedish workplace and don´t understand the situation. Here, in one month, you can integrate better than in two years in SFI (Svenska För Invandrare, the Swedish classes program for immigrants) or some other place in Malmö. You are here eight hours a day with colleagues and to be able to get a Swedish joke is really important”, says Sergey, talking from his own experience. The initiatives to create a family feeling come from two different sides: “We, who work with a non-Swedish background and the company. Every month we have breakfast meetings. We order cookies or sandwiches so you can eat at the meeting. We had two or three parties last year. The company gives every opportunity to blend and feel like home, to feel welcome, and it works!” affirms Sergey. The food seems to be a good vector of integration too. A group of 30 or 40 people in the production department bake cakes or different kind of food every Friday and to share it with each other, which is interesting, according to Jacob: “There is people from Sweden baking Swedish things, someone from Lebanon will cook Lebanese food with rose water, or baklava. It´s getting to know each other and other cultures a little bit more”.

If there is one thing the foreign-born candidates struggle with, in Sweden, it would probably be the flat hierarchy. Polypeptide Group seems to deal with this by having a clear onboarding process, as Jacob explains: “We recruit a lot of people and we are quite good at this process, not in a fancy way but in a very pragmatic way. We have a good training program where you can see exactly the tasks you will need to do. During the six months of the training, the expectations are clear and that of course helps a lot”.

Sergey remembers his first weeks at work: “When I started my first day here, we were five employees starting at the same time and we were shown around to say hej to everyone in the company. We met our CEO and he said “Hej Sergey, nice to meet you”. I didn´t know he was our CEO until our first annual meeting two weeks after this, and I was so proud that I work for a company where there is so much flat organization that you don´t need to know who is the CEO on your first or second day. And you feel much better when you work with colleagues in an environment with freedom. The person should understand that this is for their own benefit. We give the possibility to everybody. If you have a good idea, we take it. If it goes to implement, we do it. Otherwise, next time. But you cannot just follow orders. It is a philosophy”.

When it comes to philosophy, we at MINE try to sow the seeds of diversity and inclusion in the companies we meet. Some of them show good results in working with these values but others are still hesitant to work with people from different nationalities and see the problem instead of seeing the positive outcomes of it. We asked Jacob and Sergey what they would like to say to these companies. For Jacob, there is no doubt that diversity benefits business: “When it comes to diversity, I think it must come from a need somewhere. It is hard to do something without having to gain for the business, in a way. For us, we search certain competences and we take the best competences we find. That side effect is in a way diversity. Also, we are an international business, all our customers are from other countries and it is an extra bonus for us. We have people that can speak several languages, can understand different cultures and different religions. We are in that way a very competent business when it comes to diversity.” For Sergey, the best advice to give to both companies and foreign-born job seekers is to be openminded: “If you have a goal, if you have a dream, you just have to focus. When you know that you have a good education, you can prove it. Just try to send your CV to companies, go to networking events. And to the companies: Just look at the CV. Don´t look at the name, look at the education, work experience and other skills. There is a lot of really good educated and experienced people who are eager to leave something better to Sweden”. 

Written by Francois Perigault