Actively listening to employees is the foundation of their engagement

Both in my deepest belief and in the system of values ​​and everyday practice of Bank Pekao SA, trends related to well-being and maintaining a balance in professional and private life do not conflict with the pursuit of efficiency and good financial results. Quite the opposite: by ensuring employees’ well-being, including broadly understood psychological safety, and supporting them in striving for a healthy balance between professional career and private life, we actually invest in the effectiveness of our staff and the entire company, and therefore also in a better result. More than ever, we focus on the conditions in which our team operates, because we look at our organization and talk about it not in the context of profit alone, but in a broader dimension of values, with particular emphasis on the quality of life and work – and this brings good results in the most important fields.

I think that at this point, both women and men see their future in new digital technologies. Both younger and more experienced generations understand that we cannot look back and that we should use modern tools that allow us to create a new reality on our own to the greatest extent possible. The key thing is that we should not be the subject of history, but rather create and program our world ourselves. Women want to have this influence as much as men, which is why they are equally focused on technology and innovation. As an organization, we treat everyone the same, we do not distinguish gender, and we only take into account their competences. Our bank is an excellent place for development for people who want their skills to evolve, who want to create innovations, change the paradigm, improve processes and products offered. Collaboration in this area is crucial – and it is best in diverse and inclusive teams.

For me, being a leader has always been associated with the mission of developing human consciousness. As a team, we need to know who we are and who we want to be. We must know our common goal and pursue it effectively. Nowadays, this cannot be achieved without proper communication, which means listening to each other and drawing conclusions from it, adapting our vision to what we, as leaders, hear from people – employees, partners, customers. Shared goals are best established through ongoing dialogue. This dialogue is also the foundation of human commitment: employees are most willing to implement plans and strategies that they co-created, and they do it best in a company with which they identify. As a leader, I do everything to make it happen. I do this in circumstances where teams are increasingly diverse – not only generationally, but also culturally. In order to work well, they must be inclusive, because such an inclusive approach gives rise to a sense of security – fundamental for everyone – and an equally important belief that one is important to the company and performs important work. A very important element of this intricate puzzle is giving yourself and others space to make mistakes, because without it there are no new ideas, no innovations in processes and products. And innovations are the source of competitive advantages today. Innovations are created by people for whom leaders have provided appropriate conditions.

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