Life is too short for bad jobs

​"You have to dare to wish for something else, and express it to managers. I have always done that as soon as a thought came to mind. And then there are plenty of opportunities at Nordea."

Anni Zederkof, who most recently got a new job internally at the bank in March and is now a member of Strategy & Execution, knows what she is talking about.

After 41 years at the bank, she has always been able to find something new internally that she wanted to do:

"The bank is so big that it has not been necessary to leave. I have applied jobs outside the bank a couple of times, but it didn't result in anything, and I have had plenty of opportunity to develop by staying instead."

Followed the manager

When she started at what would later become first Unibank and then part of Nordea, it was at Sparekassen SDS in Copenhagen. The first change in her working life was due to her manager moving and she followed him to the department in Birkerød. 

After a few years as a bank advisor, she took the Graduate Diploma degree in Marketing and moved on to a position as marketing coordinator in Hørsholm – here, she helped arranging Unibank's merger party in Trommen in Hørsholm.

"I think it was exciting with the merger. I also saw it as something necessary, because back then there were banks on every street corner – everyone could see, there were too many."

Group leader and agriculture

In her private life, she had already found her life partner, Jim Hansen, whom she had met when they both worked at Thorgreen Toys in Lyngby Storcenter while being very young. 

While she was working in Hørsholm, the couple agreed to pursue a dream of a recreational farm in Ringsted, where they moved in with his parents.

"My husband is from Nørrebro, and I'm from Vesterbro, so it was something completely new. We learned a lot, had animals and slaughtered chickens and pigs," she says, who – also to get closer to her new home – became group leader in the department in Roskilde.

"Being a group leader wasn't really me, it didn't give me energy. It was hard, and it didn't make me happy."

Therefore, after three years, she switched again, this time to Business Banking, where she got a place in the head office's cash management:

"It was just the thing for me, there were many exciting tasks. A real consultant position, where I was also out teaching bookkeepers how to pay bills via Unitel, the current Corporate Netbank."

Hired agents for 24/7

She then studied Graduate Diploma in Organizational Theory and became a change consultant in IT, where she helped set up a contact centre in Fredericia with five group leaders and 100 agents.

Later, she was involved in e-banking for business customers, an organization that had almost 100 employees, which created Netbank and Corporate Netbank.

Incidentally, the recreational farm was sold along the way, and after nine years in rural surroundings, it was replaced with a house in Hillerød, and today the couple lives in a cooperative home in Lyngby.

Missing colleagues

There have been many other exciting jobs during her 41 years at Nordea, but when the corona pandemic shut the society down, her job satisfaction was affected.

In the Nordic team she was then part of, there were four colleagues:

"It wasn't good for my extroverted gene to work at home and not have anyone to go to lunch with. And after COVID-19, I had to be lucky to meet colleagues in the office. When there are no more people in the team and you work from home, in addition to holidays, illness and courses, it often becomes empty."

Therefore, she changed her work scene again. Since 1 March, she has been worked within Business Banking, Strategy & Execution with ten colleagues.

Loves to learn new things

As so often before, she took the initiative for the job change herself, invited her current manager for a cup of coffee and told him that the job was just for her.

"I love to learn new things. Right now I'm learning new things in terms of customer satisfaction. And it's great that there's always someone at work in our department. Our manager is also good at making sure that we have something social together," says 63-year-old Anni Zederkof.

She is also one of the few who has taken advantage of the opportunity to work on the senior part-time scheme. It has freed up a little more time for, among other things, Interrail, which she and her husband have become fond of. 

"The common thread in my working life has been to reflect and feel it, and when things start to bore me a little, I do something new. I have never regretted a change, but moved on when I had learned something in depth. Therefore, it has been - and continues to be - a great working life."