Mindset Management or the tricks of attitude management in Bulgaria

In recent years, Mindset Management has evolved from a term with a vague meaning to an essential tool for improving corporate culture, team activities, and individual employee performance. Market-leading companies rely on human capital management based specifically on mindset management to create and sustain a growth-oriented, inspired, and motivated work environment.

These types of HR policies have also proved particularly successful in the high market dynamics triggered by the global pandemic in the last year.

We asked Katerina Shopov, HR Director at Lidl Bulgaria, who was awarded the "HR Manager of the Year" for 2020 by the Bulgarian Association for People Management (BAPM), how attitudes are managed in these challenging times.

And in 2021 TOP Employers Institute announced Lidl Bulgaria as the TOP Employer for Bulgaria and Europe for the second consecutive year. How do you maintain a culture of growth and the attitudes of people in your organisation even in times of crisis?

Katerina Shopova: Leadership is key in crisis situations. The past year has been very challenging in this respect due to its dynamics and unpredictability. Some of the contacts became virtual, which complicated the processes and took away some of the tools for communication.

For us at Lidl, the topic of leadership was a priority long before COVID-19 - effective and inspiring management has always been at the heart of our corporate culture. I believe it was this attitude and good upfront work within the company to build trust that enabled us, when the crisis hit, to find the communication formats that worked quickly. We overcame the challenges thanks to honest, clear, accurate, and timely communication, because the most important thing in difficult times is not to leave people uninformed about what is coming and why we are doing it.

The sustainability of HR policy is also an essential element because it creates certainty in people. I will give an example in this direction - the expansion of Lidl's team has continued, increasing by nearly 20% to 3,200 people in 2020 alone. Key employee development programs have even been upgraded and new benefits have been introduced. Among the successful ways to make people feel motivated and part of the company's solutions are the various feedback surveys. Through these, we measure attitudes towards the steps taken and assess whether they are the right ones.

We are satisfied because the feedback from Lidl Bulgaria employees on our actions during the crisis is extremely high - over 90% find them relevant and nearly 87% think that the communication in the situation was effective.

And what are your best practices for stimulating creativity and collaboration within and between your teams?

Katerina Shopova: Creativity and collaboration are very important at work, especially for creating value-added projects. Believing in everyone's potential, and giving them freedom and enough space to express themselves are key to fostering them. A positive working environment where you feel supported and at ease to share and implement your ideas is also fundamental. At Lidl Bulgaria, we strive to provide exactly this set of prerequisites to motivate people to be creative and succeed together as a team.

Finally, do you think there are any particularities of the mindset in Bulgaria that predispose to building a growth mindset?

Katerina Shopova: I think that the process of building a growth mindset in Bulgaria can be positively influenced by our adaptability - Bulgarians manage to find a way to make things happen despite the difficulties. It is also positive that education is still valued and many young people are looking for opportunities to build on it - we see this every year with our various youth programs. The development of entrepreneurship and contact with different cultures could also help build a growth mindset. But the most important thing is to create the right mindset - that we can achieve anything and that even difficult situations offer opportunities, not just obstacles.