Natalia Lukash: Combination of technology and human potential creates competitiveness
In early February, the HR Directorate of Metinvest Digital was headed by a new director, Natalya Lukash. She has over 20 years of management experience. Natalia worked in the field of telecommunications, finance, and the public sector. For the last seven years, she held the position of HR Director at one of the largest Ukrainian banks with international capital, where she managed to create a stable HR model based on the best world practices.
Natalia's expertise covers all HR forces, including personnel development, internal communications, change management etc. She is a practicing business coach, lecturer at the Deloitte School of Future CEOs and the MBA program at the Kyiv School of Economics.
We talked with Natalia about the first impressions of working at Metinvest Digital, corporate culture and the first steps as an HR director.
Natalia, congratulations on the team. You have quite a solid management experience in HR. What was the key for you when choosing a company? Why did you choose IT and Metinvest Digital after the banking sector?
Thank you, I'm glad to join the Metinvest Digital team. Several criteria influenced my choice at once. Firstly, it is the huge scale of the company. The expertise of Metinvest Digital covers many areas. Accordingly, HR faces non-trivial tasks and interesting challenges. It inspires and motivates to move forward.
Secondly, and most importantly, these are people, a cool and purposeful team with which there is a coincidence in values. When people believe in what they are doing, it is very captivating. I am ready to sail in the same boat with such people.
IT companies, in fact, like banks belonging to organizations with a service to corporate culture. What do you think is fundamental in the formation? Is the business of the company or is the corporate culture built by the management?
Each company is like a separate organism. There can be no completely identical corporate cultures. They will be at least slightly different, since each company collects an absolutely unique mix of people.
It is important for the employer to form the corporate culture that will create opportunities for the disclosure of a person's potential. This attracts talent and allows you to build long-term relationships with employees. And satisfied employees, accordingly, provide service to customers with greater involvement. And this is impossible to copy. Immediately noticeably sincerely smile to you at store or not.
Corporate culture is about people. Everyone's influence is very important. In this case, the leader is assigned a special role, because he acts as a conductor of culture.
At the same time, there are some trends. If we talk about the corporate culture of a service company, then now there is a certain evolution. Previously, the phrase “the customer is always right” sounded everywhere. Now the focus has changed to partnership – the main task of the service company is to help the customer achieve his goals, strengthen the business. We, as an IT company, adhere to this principle in our digital projects.
As the new HR director, you now face many challenges. What will you focus on?
We can talk about it for a very long time, because there are many goals. So I'll start with the key one. Recently, my team and I launched a survey to determine which issues are of the greatest concern to our employees. Most of the employees took part in it. After analyzing the questionnaires, the main areas for development were identified. Among them – unloading employees by filling vacant positions, improving working conditions and new opportunities for training and career growth for employees.
So, in the first direction, we introduced the “Bring a friend” program – any employee can recommend a familiar candidate for a vacant position, and if he successfully passes the probationary period, the employee will receive a monetary reward. There are several advantages at once: replenishment of the team with professionals, unloading of employees, because the team will expand, and as a bonus: people with common values will work in the team.
The next direction is to improve working conditions. We have collected the needs for all offices of the company, now we are processing them. This year we will focus on purchasing small household appliances. We will start deliveries to the regions soon.
The next extremely important area is creating opportunities for employee development. We are already implementing a number of initiatives. Firstly, it is the ‘Personnel Reserve’ program, within the framework of which the development of talents within the company with their subsequent career growth. Secondly, the Expert Career program – employees will be able to improve their skills as trainers and share valuable knowledge with colleagues. The first trainers have already been trained.
If we talk about broader training, then in addition to English, employees can receive training on the Eduson and Coursera platforms. The cost of the courses is fully covered by the company.
In today's dynamic learning environment, it is more important than ever. The phrase of Lewis Carroll immediately comes to mind: ‘You must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.'
Please provide some tips to conclude our interview. How not to fail an interview with a coveted company?
The first, ask yourself why you want to get into a particular company. Second, be yourself. An experienced recruiter will immediately understand how sincere you are after a couple of minutes of conversation. Third, get ready. Study information about the company. This will show your interest and respect for a potential employer. Fourth, it will be very cool if you can show how your previous experience can be useful for the company. Get started with these simple steps. And you will have every chance.
View vacancies of Metinvest Digital here
