The BPCC together with LSEG and its partners held a half-day seminar, How Will We Manage on 25 October 2024 in Gdynia. The event explored future trends and current best practices in HR management, and was based around the innovative solutions employed by LSEG, one of Gdynia’s largest private-sector employers.
Following on from the HR and Talent Trends forum held at AstraZeneca’s Warsaw offices in March, How Will We Manage drew upon experts from business and academia, recruitment and law to dive deeply into the increasing complexity of managing teams in an uncertain world characterised by regulatory, technological and geopolitical shifts.
Opened by the deputy mayor of Gdynia, Bartłomiej Austen, the event began with a presentation of LSEG’s ‘Open Makes More Possible’ philosophy and how this works in practice, centred on the notion of ‘servant leadership’. Michał Rudnicki, LSEG’s Gdynia site co-lead, and programme manager Dominika Rolbiecka, set out the tenets of an HR strategy designed to maximise employee engagement, aid talent acquisition and reduce staff attrition. Many of the solutions used at LSEG are entirely new to HR as it is commonly experienced in Poland, and in a company with staff from 60 countries using 48 different languages, the effectiveness of ‘Open Makes More Possible’ is clear to see.
The first panel, entitled ‘Superhero – attributes of tomorrow’s manager’ consisted of a discussion between Agnieszka Bukowska, head of HR and services at Bank BPH – GE Aerospace, Agata Witczak, LSEG’s head of HR for Europe and Magdalena Białek, executive manager, Hays, and moderated by the BPCC’s chief advisor, Michael Dembinski. The greatest challenge facing employers is that the number of new entrants to the Polish labour market today is half of what it was 20 years ago, for demographic reasons. This leads to a wide gulf in attitudes between generations, and managing those differences is essential to leaders needing to retain key talents. Also discussed was the ‘silver’ labour market – the impending need to cooperate with people over retirement age who are willing to continue working. The contrast between Poland (where women retire at 60) and the UK (where women retire at 66, rising to 67 in 2026) is striking. When asked what the oldest person any of the panellists had recently recruited, ‘52’ was the outlying answer! Another challenge facing managers is the ever-growing burden of regulatory compliance, especially around ESG. If there was one ‘silver-bullet’ solution to all these challenges, the panellists agreed it was building resilience within teams, to prepare them to cope with any shocks that the future might bring.
Judyta Banaszyńska, senior associate at PwC Legal, gave a presentation about Poland’s implementation of the EU Whistleblower Directive, setting out what this meant for employers in practice, what systems and procedures they must implement – and the sanctions for non-compliance.
Will AI destroy the labour market as we know it or will it help employers overcome the demographic collapse? Katarzyna Szumigaj-Rudnik, chief people officer and HR lead at Oryx, and Bożena Roczniak, founder and CEO, Ostendi HR, concluded that talk of an impending AI-led catastrophe is exaggerated and that automation will rather be beneficial to business, the economy and society, saying that for every nine jobs that AI will kill off, it will create eight new ones. A cat-and-mouse game will ensue, as AI becomes more and more sophisticated. It is possible, that as in organic food, certain tasks might end up being certified as ‘no AI involved’.
The role of AI was also discussed in the second panel in the context of recruitment and assessment/development. Katarzyna and Bożena were joined by Ewa Carr de Avelon from Coventry University Wrocław, Bartosz Tomanek from PCS Paruch and Łukasz Chodkowski, CEO of Déhora Polska. The various tools and methodologies for objectively assessing recruits and employees were discussed in the context of finding the balance between the subjective ‘gut instinct’ and objective indicators used to validate an employer’s intuition. Bartosz Tomanek explained what rights candidates and employees had in terms of data privacy and where employers needed to be particularly careful. If using AI tools to assess or recruit, employees need to be made aware of that. Łukasz Chodkowski spoke about the growing move worldwide towards a four-day working week, predicting that within ten years, the weekend will have expanded, though not with everyone having Friday off.
The discussion covered confirmation bias, a person’s change over time, being able to distinguish talent and potential, and there was a fair amount of attention given to neurodiversity and the extent to which sub-clinical behavioural traits along various disorder spectrums would or would not make useful indicators for HR.
The seminar concluded with a networking session, providing attendees with an opportunity to connect with industry peers and share insights and business cards.
Participants were impressed by LSEG’s advances in people management, which becomes apparent when visiting the Gdynia site; employees are happy and enthusiastic and a strongly positive atmosphere is radiated.
There was a consensus to follow up this event with one in Wrocław in the first quarter of 2025.
