Swedspan Girių Bizonas Has a Hectic Spring Agenda

Time for Clean-Up

At this time of the year Swedspan Girių Bizonas is a hive of activity. The spring clean-up virus which will spread all over Lithuania during the Darom 2011 action hasn't passed by this company either. It's not only that it hasn't passed by – it has actually overwhelmed it at the start of the week! Once a decision was made to join the Darom 2011 action, clean-up at the enterprise started a bit earlier. On 12 April the staff of the company were invited to take part in the atiDAROM action organized by the Swedspan Girių Bizonas in order to collectively make the grounds of the enterprise nicer.

At ten in the morning a crowd of enthusiastic staff (around a hundred and a half in total) got to work. While the women raked leaves and litter, the men embarked on physically more demanding work such as cleaning up the grounds near the railway and planting trees. After a few hours' hard labour, the people willingly accepted the employer's invitation to have lunch together outdoors: everyone was happy to help themselves to chicken broth, kibinai, barbecue and other delicious treats. The initiators of the atiDAROM action say that project has been a complete success – not only has our environment become more attractive, but we have also proved again that we are a great team. Therefore, the company highly appreciates everyone's participation and wants to give special thanks to those employees who joined the clean-up action even though it was their day off.

New Members in Work Group

The day before this clean-up action, 11 April, the Swedspan Girių Bizonas teemed with activity as well. With the work group meeting on the agenda that day, the company welcomed some guests – representatives of the Kazlų Rūda community and municipality. The company's initiatives and nearest future plans were discussed.

At the start of the meeting Regina Zasienė, Director General of the Swedspan Girių Bizonas, introduced everyone to the new members of the work group, Giedrius Bielskus, Vice-Mayor of Kazlų Rūda, and Vidmantas Striokas, the parish priest. After expressing her wish and hope that the newly elected municipality representative Mr. Bielskus complete great projects in the town council, Mrs. Zasienė said she was especially happy about the priest joining the work group, ‘You take care of soul matters, so you are very close to people and know what they expect. This is why we would like to hear as many observations of yours as possible.'

The members of the work group were invited to join the national clean-up action Darom 2011 on 16 April and to come to the area supervised by the Swedspan Girių Bizonas (Borisevičiaus Street adjacent at the viaduct). The more people are determined to free nature from rubbish, plant trees and thus wake up spring, the better! Besides, as that the company sees to the clean-up tools as well as to the picnic after work, the only thing one has to do is to come in good mood.

Open to Society

Another issue discussed in the work group is concerned with communication between the Swedspan Girių Bizonas and the public. Members of the work group emphasized that they were especially satisfied with the company's effort to establish close contacts with the Kazlų Rūda community. The atmosphere in the company itself has improved significantly as well, which is evident from employees' feedback. Mr. Andriušis, who has worked in the company before, says that looking back to the old times, today ‘things have changed for the better'. Mrs. Zasienė puts down this approval to the company's policy, which could not be imagined without rapport among co-workers.

Talking about what action should be taken so that the company become even more open to the public, representatives of the Swedspan Girių Bizonas revealed the plans to establish contacts with younger generation by inviting pupils and college students to tours of the enterprise and introducing them to the production process. The initiative was extremely well received by the parish priest as he has much experience in youth work.

At the work group meeting community representatives were pleased to find out the outcome of the recent visit of the Swedspan International executives. The recently conducted environmental audit and assessment showed that the Swedspan Girių Bizonas is the leader enterprise of the group by the compliance criteria for environment protection and security at work. In response to some surprise expressed how Lithuanians might do even better than Swedes, Mrs. Zasienė said with a smile, ‘Lithuanians want to catch up with everyone as soon as possible. Our employees are really great and fast workers! The results owe to the staff's collective endeavour'.

Toward Optimization

After giving out reports on the Green Agenda to the members of the work group, the Director General spoke about guidelines set out in the agenda, which are compulsory to all enterprises of the IKEA group. Although quite a few objectives set forth by the parent company have been realized, there is still much to do. One of the objectives to pursue deals with environment protection. As Mrs. Zasienė points out, at meetings with the company's executives the issue of how to optimize the company's activity persists. Lithuanian as well as international laws encourage the use of renewable resources, so naturally the Swedspan Girių Bizonas cannot lag behind these tendencies either. Thus the work group was presented with the new direction to be undertaken: the now used fossil fuel should be replaced by biofuel, the heating system should be modernized by building a new bioboiler and thus reduce the number of pollution sources in the company's territory. This would allow the company to return to the natural CO2 cycle and become a carbon-neutral enterprise.

Medical doctor Vilija Kazlienė concluded the meeting of the work group by expressing her approval of the changes taking place in the Swedspan Girių Bizonas, ‘The company can boast of prompt action and of doing many nice things, which is very good. People of the town live very close to the enterprise, so our cooperation is very important. I'm happy that this cooperation is taking place as we can feel the results. For example, as the closest neighbours of the company have witnessed, noise has declined significantly.

Kazlų Rūda Weekly