AmRest supports employee development in the pandemic era

I have been working for AmRest for 20 years but my work with organizing the program has started just 3 years ago. It can be said that starting from this year I am fully responsible for what is happening in the project. My role is examining the needs, defining the content, matching the trainers, or planning the schedule. The main challenge, however, is adjusting current needs and trends to our basic framework of the leadership program. The shape of this event is constantly evolving and depends on where we are as a company and what needs the market creates. The best example is  2020 - everything was ready, invitations were sent out, the schedule was buttoned up when the pandemic suddenly appeared and we had to start everything from the scratch.

Two training modules were planned for this year, both of them consisted of 5 days of in-class sessions, to which participants from all over the world were about to come to Poland. Since COVID happened, everything was turned upside down. On the one hand, we had no idea what is going to happen as in one moment the current needs of the organization and leaders have changed dramatically. On the other hand, there were limitations - budgets were frozen, trips suspended. Nevertheless, I decided that I will not quit nor cancel the event but I will make everything online. I started by researching the needs, conducting a survey among participants and collecting their opinion on the challenges ahead. Based on this, I created a completely new program.

First of all, I knew that in a given moment the leaders did not have time to get involved in creating new content with me. Despite the fact that I could always count on their commitment and support, the situation was exceptional and their involvement was more needed in other areas. I decided to focus on finding external knowledge tailored to the results that came out of the survey. The e-learning of the ICAN Institute turned out to be an ideal solution.

In the beginning, we took care of the appropriate content. The participants addressed their needs and it turned out that some of these topics have never been discussed so far. Therefore, the program included communicating difficult decisions, making decisions in uncertain situations, being empathetic in cooperation with people and at the same time still achieving results, dealing with stress, and strengthening resistance to difficult situations.

Based on this, we created a program that was spread over 9 weeks in which all participants took part in 9 ICAN Institute e-learning modules. Each participant was given an access to the platform where they had to complete a module once a week.

The rest of the elements of the program were created together with our leaders. We wanted to keep what was always the most important in AMU - top managers have always taught people and passed their mindset to the next generation of leaders. That is why there were also 7 sessions led by our leaders, 3 Q&A sessions with top management, and Group Analysis Practice (GAP) sessions based on peer-to-peer learning.

What's also new this year is the scoring system. To track the progress of our students, we were giving points for various activities: to pass AMU and receive the certificate of graduation, it was necessary to obtain 85% of the points.

From the learning perspective, a big advantage is that the program was extended in time and the knowledge were given to participants in small portions. For an adult’s learning process, it is much better solution – there is a time to analyze, implement knowledge, draw conclusions and share feedback. Such learning is much more effective.

A great benefit is also that AMU participants could work normally during that time. During those 9 weeks, they had 5-8 hours of commitment per week for learning. Comparing to the in-class version where they had sessions from morning to evening 5 days in a row, and after the sessions, they still made phone calls and sent emails to teams, current program seems to be more effective. Everyone could fit their calendars of the day so that it did not disturb its work rhythm. Thanks to this, they avoided the stress of having to make up for the absence.

Finally, I think the online version is also much more convenient, especially in terms of travel. For many of our participants, e.g. from China or Russia, the arrival in AMU takes additional days off their normal work. I think that online program will allow us to reach even more people in the coming years. On the other hand, the lack of real contact with people is the only drawback that I notice.

I used to be an AMU participant by myself and I remember that it had a huge impact on my development. For the young manager, meeting people from all over the world, getting to know the company's management, and working so closely with them was a 'going out comfort zone’ experience. But it was also a time to establish a relationship and show your strengths and abilities. This is what missing in the online version - this networking element.

Looking to the future of AMU, I think we will adopt a hybrid model to get the best out of both, the online and offline versions. What we definitely want to do is give more outside knowledge. After this year, we can see how much it is needed. We are going to look for partners for cooperation - universities, external experts. We also want to find the possibility of certification of our programs by external companies or universities to have confirmation of our program’s best quality.