“We have the ability to adapt to every situation and use challenges as a fuel to boost development. The key principle is to always look for opportunities, be brave, yet responsible.” Poland Weekly talks to Paweł Michalik, Head of ING Hubs Poland.
What is the recipe for the success of a company?
It always takes the right people to achieve anything. In my colleagues and peers, I look for engagement, taking responsibility, caring and thinking long term. It is often said that we hire for attitude and not that much for competence, which is not fully true. However, in the people I work with I especially value openness for feedback allowing for a step-back and change of mind or opinion and consequently way of working. It is a matter of attitude more than an organized process, continuous change rather than a periodic transformation.
Throughout the years I can clearly see that keeping the core values and culture at the heart of our organization – together with the ability to change everything else when it makes sense – is the key ingredient of a successful and healthy organization.
As an international company with 20 years on the market – how does ING Hubs Poland impact global ING?
We have come a long way from supporting two local ING entities in Poland with a single technology platform to a global organization being a part of few major functions of the ING group and playing a significant role in technology, operations and risk management of a global financial institution. We are a part of the global Hubs organization, which constitutes more than 20 proc. of the global ING competency pool. Using the strength and flexibility created by cross location Hubs and having many of our colleagues hold managerial positions within the functional lines, our impact is even bigger and more direct. We create the processes and products for millions of people around the world.
What are you most proud of looking 20 years back?
Again, people! Both to see the remarkable development journeys that some have gone through, starting from junior positions and now holding responsibility for important parts of ING’s global functions. Also, the fact that we still want to and are open to change and that we look for new ways of developing our business and the company.
I’m also proud to hear opinions of people who have recently joined that ING Hubs Poland is an organization they feel welcome in, being part of something bigger since the very beginning and providing concrete development opportunities.
It is good to see that the way we are creating the working environment attracts true talents from many parts of the world. Currently our employees come from 75 countries and such diversity is another great reason to be proud. Thanks to it there are plenty of initiatives coming from three main diversity groups: Diversity Culture, Rainbow Lions and Diversity Group for Women, whose main common objective is to pursue inclusion and integrate across units and cultures.
What does the future hold for your company in these turbulent times?
We have the ability to adapt to every situation and use challenges as a fuel to boost development. In turbulent times people tend to concentrate on repairing what went wrong, and in our case, we quickly react to the situation and then plan for the future consequences – and use them to our benefit, not only to address the current situation. Then, we concentrate on preparing ourselves for what we should pay attention to in the long run – be it market conditions or hybrid work. We are lucky enough to be part of a global organization with solid foundations we can rely on.
In my opinion, the key principle is to always look for opportunities, be brave, yet responsible, to take them, and always look ahead while dealing with present issues. I am convinced with the flexibility we have worked out during the pandemic, there is no reason to be anxious about the future. Recent history shows that resilience lies in people and good organization, not in the ability to predict future scenarios with 100 proc. predictability.
“We are creators” is the tagline of the recent ING Hubs Poland campaign – why such a tagline?
The term „creators” applies to all our employees in many aspects of their work. We create solutions, software, systems, operations and teams. And on top of that, we all create our organizational culture – through our routines, ways of working, self-development, handling obstacles and the way we look at the future. This way we create the bank of the future.
We are already good at consistent and responsible delivery, resilience, transforming, scaling and productizing. These are our core competencies and the major argument for the trust we have earned globally for the last 20 years, as ING Hubs Poland. Now we focus on using the potential we have built to be even more creative and disruptive, drive change and innovate.
