Jonas Slavinskas is the Senior Director Group Controlling, Treasury, M&A at Capri Sun Group in Switzerland. He has been with the business for almost five years, having previously spent four years at PepsiCo and four years at Mondelez. Jonas started his Finance career at Kraft Foods Group in Lithuania in 2003.

What does your onboarding/hiring process look like?

It depends on the position and location, but we try to use our own network, because that gives us the opportunity to get someone we know or one of our existing employees knows. We also post the position on LinkedIn sometimes – depending on the seniority or if it’s a confidential project – and professional agencies.

What helps is that Capri Sun is a known brand and a top employer for the fifth year in a row, which obviously helps us to attract top talent in the industry.

We take onboarding very seriously. Even before the new hire starts, we have a checklist of the software and hardware we need to provide; we want to make sure that their working space is ready before the new hire joins.

Then we have an onboarding academy, which is the formal process run by our HR department. The candidate goes through a number of different topics, such as the Capri Sun culture, ways of working and business models.

The onboarding academy is followed by around two weeks of individual sessions with relevant stakeholders. They’re a bit like meet and greet sessions, but it’s also about explaining the stakeholder point of view. This helps the new hire feel welcomed, valued and prepared to do their best work from the very beginning.

What are the three to five key drivers to success in Capri Sun that you watch the most?

We have five values that shape our identity as a company, but - more importantly - they guide us as employees in our day-to-day work.

Not in order of importance:

1. Simplicity: We keep things simple, as it gives clarity and speed.
2. Integrity: We say what we do and do what we say. We are honest, transparent and respectful to all.
3. Entrepreneurship: We think and act as owners, and always demonstrate a can-do attitude. We always put our consumers first and see how we can best compete in the marketplace.
4. Excellence: We constantly raise the bar and find more efficient ways of working. We believe in innovation and technology to help us reach our goals.
5. Solidarity: We believe we are stronger if we work together. We work hard, but also party hard. We look to eliminate internal barriers and work towards common and aligned goals to reach our global vision.

Is Switzerland a good place to live and why?

It depends a lot on personal taste and circumstances, but – of course - in my view, Switzerland is a great place to live and work. I’ve lived and worked in Switzerland for 12 years.

What’s important to me is that Switzerland is very stable economically and politically, and is safe. Being a father of two, it has a good social system, and relatively low taxes.

It is also in the heart of Europe, meaning everything is quite accessible, and it’s international. There are a lot of international businesses, with a big international community. I, personally, don’t feel any discomfort being a foreigner living in Switzerland.

Another point I’d add is that even in big cities, there is a lot of nature around – you have mountains, lakes, and the Swiss focus on preserving nature or incorporating nature in their daily lives.

What risks have you taken throughout your career and how did they help you get to the level you are at?

That’s a great question. What does it mean to take a risk? For me, it means moving outside of your comfort zone. A few things can happen. One thing, you grow, and your comfort zone expands. That’s the desired outcome.

If I thought I haven’t failed, I would argue that I haven’t taken enough risks. Looking back at my career, there were probably three defining moments where I took certain decisions that got me where I am today.

The first was when I decided to take an expat assignment abroad. I joined Kraft Foods back in my home country and worked there for six years. I reached the Treasurer role for the Baltic region, built my network, and gained a lot of respect. But it became a comfort zone. I took the decision to get international experience.

Something that was meant to be one year to collect international experience and come back turned into 14 years of living and working abroad - and counting. But I don’t regret the decision for a minute; I worked in different countries, met many talented people of different nationalities, which immensely broadened my perspective on work and life in general. My kids were born in Switzerland, so I would call it being a citizen of the globe.

The second was that, after four years working for one of the largest food companies, Mondelez (it was like a second home for me), I decided to leave for one of the largest beverage companies, PepsiCo. It not only allowed me to grow professionally, but it also gave me the comparability angle. It allowed me to objectively compare what is the best-in-class practice across the two different businesses.

The third was my decision to join Capri Sun. After 18 years working for big US multi-national, publicly listed companies, I decided to join a privately-owned company. It turned out to be the best decision of my career. I got used to working for businesses with a lot of support around you, but I wanted to get closer to the business.

I was leading Operational Finance in the Group Controlling function in one of the most severe economic environments. When you’re on a smaller boat and there’s a storm in the sea, you feel it. It’s down to how you navigate with the rest of the crew. It was very tough, but it taught me a lot about resilience and calculated risk.

Most importantly, it taught me a lot about entrepreneurship. You can’t hide in big structures anymore, so you need to drive results and be visible. It’s rewarding, but very daunting; you immediately see how your decisions are reflected in the business results.

But, if you do that successfully, you have immense rewards. 

What is the biggest myth about your profession that you would like to debunk?

There are a few about Finance! Probably the universal one is that Finance has long been associated with number crunchers or bean counters. However, a lot has changed recently, and we’ve seen a massive strategic shift in data automation and digitalization, which have taken over repetitive and burdensome tasks. 

A Finance professional is now expected to become a business advisor or business partner who can curate the data and provide progressive insights on how to navigate the business and enhance shareholder and stakeholder value creation decisions.

What is your opinion on the four-day work week?

I would respond with two points. The first is that I think it can only work if there is an even playing field; it can only work if it’s universally adopted by all players in the industry. Otherwise, it would be very hard to compete against other businesses who are on different schedules.

The second is my personal answer - I go with the quote, "Don’t count the days, make the days count,” which for me - if you love your job - counting working days somehow loses meaning.

What is the future of Finance?

Hard to say, but clearly there is a lot of buzz going on around artificial intelligence. I think AI will continue to transform Finance on the back of digitalization and automation. Eventually, like I said before, technology will take over repetitive tasks.

I expect the Finance professional role will move towards how to leverage the information that is produced by technology to drive effective decision making across the organization.

I think our soft skills will almost become more valuable, including understanding business processes outside of Finance. Also, how to navigate across the organization, how to network with your business partners, how to communicate and influence. The data will always be there, but you need to be able to leverage the data to drive effective decisions across the organization. 

What are the key challenges your business faces regarding sustainability?

It’s a very important question for all businesses in the food and beverages industry. Elimination of plastic and CO₂ footprint reduction are the major challenges faced by the food and beverage industry today, and Capri Sun is no exception.

We always say that every challenge is an opportunity. Our vision is to become the most sustainable, number one kids drink in the world.

Over the last few years, we’ve taken many steps to make our product as sustainable as possible. In 2020, we launched our paper straw, which saved over 400,000kg of plastic in 2021. To reduce our CO₂ footprint, we localize our production close to consumers.

We are launching the fully recyclable pouch, which will be one of the most sustainable packaging formats in the beverages industry.  

How do you approach strategic workforce planning?

It starts with a three-year strategic business plan.

We call it the strategy house, which sits in the heart of our strategic plan. We call it the house because the roof is our vision, and we have three pillars: Growth, cost and cash, and people.

Then we have a fundament on which the three pillars stand, which enables us to win based on our key enablers, like systems, processes, quality, safety, and sustainability.

Under the strategic pillar of people, we address how we will raise capabilities, deliver our business plan, boost our talent pipeline, and create a great place to work. We address all three goals as part of our three-year strategic business plan, which creates the individual work plans and the one-year operational plan.

Thank you to Jonas for speaking to Annie Gosnell, Senior Consultant in our Finance & Accountancy recruitment division in Switzerland. 

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment.