Introducing Mika Vanninen, Marketing and Sales Director: bringing more business and extensive HSEQ expertise to the team

Joining Protect this year as Director of Sales and Marketing Mika Vanninen is one of the newest faces in our work community. The versatile all-rounder brings to the Protect team not only his extensive HSEQ expertise, but also a colleague with a sense of humour and ambition to bring Protect expertise to the operations of all Finnish companies. Read on and get to know Mika better!

Mika got into the HSEQ sector while studying at a polytechnic. During his studies, he was involved in building a customer's ISO9001 quality system, which gave him an idea of what a quality system entails. He realised that there are many important issues when talking about HSEQ - and the broad subject matter drew him in. 

Now our new Sales and Marketing Director sees the evolution of legislation as creating more and more headaches for businesses. With ever-increasing requirements, there is a growing need for HSEQ expert services, especially in the industrial sector. This is one of the reasons why Mika chose Protect: understanding the needs of industrial companies and having extensive HSEQ expertise enables us to provide them with the expertise they need, even if the client doesn't know exactly what needs to be put in place.

- Protect has a wealth of expertise to help companies ensure that they meet their safety, quality and environmental obligations across all their operations. This is important for a company as these have a number of implications for staff wellbeing, business success and continuous improvement. With our expertise, companies don't have to go beyond their own core competencies to try to keep up with legislation and requirements in HSEQ matters, but we can help them with these," says Mika.

- In the future, the dream would be to grow in such a way that we could offer HSEQ services all over Finland, he says.

Ambition can be found not only at work, but also in your free time. An active lifestyle takes Mika to cycling events and adventure races, among other things. He can also be spotted in the badminton hall and on the ski slopes! The whole Protect team took part in a cycling mileage race in the summer, and the whole team clocked up a staggering 3 771 kilometres!

However, Mika's joining the Protect team was not a foregone conclusion. A strong HSEQ expert with a DI background, he had been attracted to the idea of starting his own business when he was contacted by a recruitment firm. What attracted Protect to Mika was her diverse background as a specialist in a variety of roles in different companies.

- They had spotted me at Protect because I have both sales experience and an HSEQ background in industry and manufacturing. I have worked as a sales manager, HSEQ manager and health and safety manager in both domestic and international industrial companies," says Mika.

This experience gives you a broad insight into the HSEQ sector and the different aspects of the business, which is essential for marketing and selling your company. So what attracted Mika to Protect? 

- I was a bit in two minds about the direction I wanted to take my career. I was interested in development work and I thought that I could get into doing these things in the organisation. In the end, I chose Protect because I was attracted by the opportunity to contribute to the development and growth of the company," says Mika.

Having worked for the company for some time now, Mika feels he is in the right place in the Protect team. Among other things, the possibility of hybrid work and flexibility are praised. They allow him to balance work and life.

- Certainly, the feeling from the first conversations that this was a nice group to work with also influenced the choice. It's a really nice team," says Mika.

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