L&D at rebuy Poznań: Interview with Bartek Patelski
Hi Bartek, tell us about your journey so far at rebuy in Poznań!
Hi there. I started working at the beginning of 2020, which wasn’t the best year for the world. COVID-19, an uncertain future, ecological disaster, and I was an administrative assistant at rebuy. Despite the unfavorable circumstances, it was quite an intense time in my professional career, and it has remained so to this day. It’s challenging to describe over four years in a short answer. Initially, there were definitely plenty of invoices to enter, a few people to welcome to the organization, a few events to organize, and Kaizens to implement. Simultaneously, there was a Christmas tree to trim with a kitchen knife, donuts to stuff with ketchup, and treasure hunts with a 19th-century death theme. After a year, I became an HR specialist. My primary responsibility is talent development at all levels of our organization. I am also responsible for benefits and administering the platform for measuring employee engagement.
Could you give us more details about your current projects and what you hope to achieve?
At the beginning of this year, I started a rather large project to change the approach to learning & development challenges within the organization. I approached this from two angles. I invited leaders, managers, and directors to the Academy project, based on monthly training sessions conducted by specialists in various fields from our company.
Internal trainers and using internal knowledge, that’s a great idea!
Absolutely! This way, we can develop training competencies in people who never thought they could conduct a training session. We share knowledge internally, which is used daily within the company. We started with soft skills such as transactional analysis, contracting, providing feedback, emotional intelligence, and handling difficult situations in relations. Furthermore, we plan to offer facilitation, finance, and project management training.
We heard that you’re approaching this in a rather non-traditional way…
You heard that right! The entire initiative is based on storytelling with a strong Cyberpunk theme, gamification, and a system of points, cards, and badges. It’s a simple system, although I feel like I’m the only one who thinks so. I won’t bore you with the details. This way, I wanted to change the approach to development. No one says that development is not essential to them. Everyone wants to train and acquire new knowledge, or so they claim.
Sounds like you don’t believe in this statement!
Yeah, I believe the truth is quite different. Often, when it comes to development, we don’t expect to have to do any work, and we think new skills will appear on our personal development tree naturally, like snowdrops after winter. This leads to an attitude of expecting someone to develop us without any effort on our part. To sum up, there is a difference for me between being present at a training session and acquiring knowledge. One is an event and a break from routine, which typically leads us to appreciate ourselves simply for dedicating our time to so-called “development”. The other, on the other hand, is the painstaking path of honing skills.
You mentioned a two-track approach.
Yes, the Academy aims to disseminate knowledge that the organization has identified as key, but this doesn’t fully address individual development needs. Each person has different needs, and very rarely do we have a clear goal of action. This is where I try to help by creating competency CVs with employees based on their Gallup’s strengths. Together, we discuss the top 10 talents, which are natural predispositions indicated by the psychometric test, and how to develop them so that a talent becomes a strength. Then, I ask two simple questions:
1. What position do you currently hold?
2. What position would you like to hold?
Listing the competencies you have and those required for your desired position creates a natural development path for the employee. Of course, the form is more detailed, but again, I wouldn’t want to bore you with the specifics.
Does it work? How do you evaluate this project?
It’s difficult to evaluate currently, as the Academy is ongoing. I’m inviting new people to lead sessions, the topics are changing fundamentally, and I have a few ideas on how I could make the whole project even more bizarre. We already have a game, puzzles hidden in the training materials, and I’d like to focus more on storytelling, but it’s not that simple. When I did an internship in a municipal government, everyone always told me that if a matter was stuck or there wasn’t enough data, I should say the issue is evolving. How do I evaluate the project? I’ll answer in January; the issue is evolving.
Why did the topic of development become your specialization?
Specialization is saying a lot. I’d rather say it’s an area of interest where what I have to say someone found worth listening to. There is a poem by Wisława Szymborska that starts as follows:
“There are those who manage life more efficiently.
They have order within themselves and around them.
A way for everything and the right answer.”
Walking the beaten path next to our well-known everyday life, we encounter very threatening truths. Develop yourself! You will fall behind! It may seem that we encounter threats. To confirm the seriousness of the situation, an offer for sale and an invoice to pay are usually added to the threat. At some point in history, we were convinced that the learning process is a challenge we must pay, often not monetarily. Once again, I must take an opposing stance. I gained more knowledge from a short YouTube video than during a two-day HR conference. In the comic about the rabbit Ronin Usagi by Stan Sakai, I found more beautiful moral truths than in the books with golden-lettered names of moralists. What I am getting at is the importance of being open to seeking learning, not just finding a slot in the calendar for development. Returning to the Nobel laureate, I’ll end by quoting the conclusion of the above poem:
“Sometimes I envy them
— luckily, it passes.”
Bartek, thank you for your view on Learning & Development and insights into what’s happening in Poznań!
