Andreea Mihnea, First Bank: “Employees are looking for connection and for purpose in their company”

“If we take a broader view to what has happened during the pandemic, people have evolved into how they look at work, meaning of work and what they are doing in the companies. We can now see our employees being very assertive from the perspective of what they want and what they need. The fact that now they have a big say into how and when they work it helped a lot into bringing this into the front place as well so they became even more assertive to requesting companies to have their way into how they deliver value,” Andreea Mihnea, Chief People Officer, First Bank said during “Belonging at Work Conference” powered by The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“So, we are now in a place where the relationship with the employees is like that. Organizations need to ask what they actually want from the people. We should distribute more leadership and allow people to come with their ideas because what we really care about is getting value from them and not telling them to do that.

As a result, and the pandemic helped a lot, I see a lot more of this mindset shift coming our way from the leadership perspective, from the organizations’ perspective into accepting this new type of dynamic.

What I have seen in the past two years from the companies that I have been interacting with was a bigger investment in learning and development, and I believe that happens across industries.

Organizations recognized the fact that you need to complement what is not with something that you can bring into the workplace, which is development, more opportunities for learning.

HR is an enabler for business first of all. From this perspective, the fact that we have embedded a lot of technology in all of these processes has helped us a lot.

It was mentioned in the panel that people come for the brand and for the power of the company. I do not agree and I give you the example of the great resignation. People want to live and they give up their jobs not for better opportunities sometimes.

People come for connection and for purpose. They want to come to people they resonate with. People come in companies to work with people they like.

People are willing to leave their job to work for another team or manager knowing they will empathy in that place.

I believe in the power of teams or small groups of people. You have different ecosystems in your company that you need to be aware of and give them freedom to co-create how they want to deliver your business. You need to have a common measurement for what you want in terms of behaviours, values and the culture of your organization.”

Click here for the event recording.