Daria Rudnik (00:01.272)
Welcome to Built the By People Leaders podcast. I'm your host, Daria Rudnik, and this show is for HR and L &D leaders, those building real impact from within and shaping AI radio organizations. If you go to daryarudnik.com, you can download the State of HR in AI Transformation 2026 report. And today we have a very special guest, Anastasia Minko, a senior HR project manager at Smart Europe with deep experience across rewards, performance management, HR business partnering, and talent acquisition. Welcome, Anastasia.

Anastasia (00:32.264)
Hi, Daria. Thank you for the invitation. Happy to be here.

Daria Rudnik (00:35.78)
Well, tell us about your journey. mean, we've been working together here and out, and I know you worked in scale up startups, enterprises. What's your HR leadership?
What's your HR journey?

Anastasia (00:50.648)
Thank you for the question. Yeah, it's been a while since we talked last time and yeah, it looks like, it feels like it was in another really life. And I'm really happy to reconnect again. So in a nutshell, I would say I started, it was quite a random choice by the way. Like I happened to be in HR randomly, but then I had also some time to reassess my career path and I still chose to proceed in HR. So I started initially in rewards in Deloitte and then I transitioned to Unilever also still in compensation and benefits back then. I think back then it was compensation and benefits total rewards was not really a thing. And then I switched to tech and it was Yandex.

Big Tech in Russia back then, it was only 6,000, I think. I grew there to reward manager and then I also switched to HR business partner role as that was the time when it was starting like this whole hype about HR business partner and dedicated HR person for specific areas. And I liked it. And since then until up, well,

till now or like past few months, I was basically doing mostly HR business partnering and now and then also developing performance review processes, design integration. As I had always a reward experience and it was my strength when I would join companies where it needed to be upgraded or maybe designed from scratch. That's what I also did as a side project. And currently I'm...

I also moved to Germany four and a half years back where I also had some changes. I also started first with tech and currently I'm in automotive, my first automotive experience ever. And recently I changed from HR business partner role to reward. And I'm now working on the project that will restart our...

Anastasia (03:13.368)
call, reward, pay philosophy, all the pay scale things, but also what is most important, I would say, prepare the company for the European Union Transparency Directive. Yeah, that's my focus now, and that's how I got there.

Daria Rudnik (03:27.588)
That's an incredible experience across industries, across various HR functions, across cultures. Well, I don't know what is that. Well, when you think about your experience, again, different stages of organizations, different cultures, what stands out for you the most when you as a HR are trying to navigate

high pace ever changing environments need to make decisions in the uncertainty. What have you learned through this experience?

Anastasia (04:07.982)
Well, think, honestly, the thing which stands out the most, and I think that's also the reason why it is enjoyable and possible for me to go through industries, through cultures, this is the thought and observation that we, as humans, have a lot in common. Yes, there are cultural layers. Yes, there are different industries.

But in a nutshell, we have a lot to share. And it was funny enough to see how the same problems would evolve regardless of really which industry, which country you are. It's always like, for example, process automatization. It's still there, Excel is still there. And I would say if we look over SME, like small, businesses.

It's maybe one of the most used tools still to run salary reviews. and this is crazy because back in Russia, I thought, okay, we just don't have really good tools for that because the legislation in that area requires us to use something that stores the data in Russian data centers. And not a lot of companies would do that.

And then I moved to Germany. And well, yeah, of course, when it's a big, like, you know, from vibe, can say startup, but then if you are operating across, well, the globe and you have 70,000 employees, there's no way you can, you cannot do Excel. You need something like Workday or SAP. But then if you go like a layer down, like to small medium businesses, this is where it's still

like not really fixed. Of course, it depends on the company, of course, but especially when we're talking about multiple entities across Europe, it's always easy to digitalize one piece in one jurisdiction. And also for me, one of another topics was, you know, before moving to Europe, thought, okay, Europe is something like as a whole thing. Well, it's not, it's very different. And

Anastasia (06:22.858)
Yeah, it's sometimes crazy different. cannot even, you know, from HR standpoint, you cannot align a lot of things just because legally wise, you must to be compliant. But that also means that you have a lot of different differences in terms of well benefits in terms of pay, in terms of pretty much everything. Yeah, that was one of those two, guess, were the interesting

things that came across throughout my journey.

Daria Rudnik (06:56.272)
Well, that's really interesting. And I also like, work with people in all continents, six continents, and I work with people with Japan and Australia and India and US. And what I'm noticing, like you said, we all human beings, we all people, yes, we do have some, I don't know, things, but it's very important for leaders to understand the human side first and not just put in labels. Hey, this person is from India and this person is from the US.

They must act like this. No, they're not. And seeing people behind the role, seeing real human beings is the first step. And then comes all the culturalists and process and everything else. Cool. Well, I'm really curious. Like you said, this culture in German companies is specific and specific to region. And you have experience working with international companies like Deloitte and Unilever.

Anastasia (07:38.454)
Yeah, yeah. Totally. Totally.

Daria Rudnik (07:53.99)
like Russian companies like Yandex and Positive Technologies, now Europe, German countries. What do you notice specifically interesting for German companies, for German culture?

Anastasia (08:08.056)
So I would generally say that the culture in the companies with headquarters in Germany, let's call it that way, it's more professional in a way that we can disagree as professionals because we just think differently. Because when we are trying to solve this or that specific problem,

but it doesn't get personal until you intentionally. I mean, I never saw this, but I think it could be possible until you intentionally make it possible, you know, make it personal while in Russian companies. And I'm not sure, but from what I've heard from the people who are working with in the companies with Russian speaking management and where the majority of the employees is still

Russian speaking employees. the personal interaction, so you bring it into the business. It's not professional at the first place from start. So if you hate someone for any reason, it impacts the business. then, know, like it's just, since I'm here for four and a half years, it's not so long, but some things I really already forget how I...

Daria Rudnik (09:22.769)
Yeah.

Anastasia (09:36.278)
should have been managing all those personal level conflicts while being HR business partner with quite high level managers by the way, but it was not a business thing. They just had different approaches to, I don't know, life, guess, but that's what's influencing the business. So in...

Any German company or company which I worked for here in Germany, and there were three so far, that was never the issue. Different problems, but it was never personal enough to create really business impact. I've seen conflict between manager and direct report, but it was never high-level managers who cannot stand each other.

because I don't know like different points of view to life. That's the one I guess. And then I think that's the major one. From HR standpoint, I also see a big difference. I got used to it now that you don't need to explain management why you need processes, HR processes, why you need performance review, why you need...

pay structures. You don't have to explain it. They know they need it and they're happy to hire someone who can actually build a business, a system that supports business, not just very HR compliant system, but the one that actually supports the business needs. Back in Russia, the start was always the buying from the management.

So you had to convince, I had to convince managers that, know, pay scales and grading is actually what something that we need. And it was not easy, like at all. I mean, in Unilever, of course, that was something that was non-negotiable. It was just there. But if I, when I'm reflecting on my experience with Yandex or positive technologies,

Anastasia (11:56.172)
you know, that was like, because headquarters is in Russia. So, you know, we can decide what we do and what we don't do. And then you're like, yeah, well, HR understands that some system is needed to manage the budgets, to make it transparent to well, yeah, for everything, pretty much. And for people as well, of course, so that they understand what kind of growth and how pace is related to performance, all of that. But for managers, somehow it was always like,

is most of the cases, it was something that you had to onboard them with these ideas. And some still, I remember people saying, know, like management saying, the moment Yandex calls for grading, I resign.

Daria Rudnik (12:39.633)
I think I heard that.

Anastasia (12:43.342)
And, you know, of course, that was also maybe some special moment. don't know, like I know that in Yandex, they do have grades and all of that started back then. Yeah, but and I don't know, also, is it still the problem now? if I would go back to Russia and I would join some startup, it also be then the point I would need to discuss with management? I don't know how much changed within this four and a half years. But that was really

I think. Here? No, everyone understands.

Daria Rudnik (13:15.857)
Do you think it's not so much about culture, but the organizational maturity? Because Yandex and Posit Technologies are startups and scale-ups, still growing, fast-moving, ever-changing. well, Smart is definitely an enterprise. Unilever is an enterprise. And they've been through those stages.

Anastasia (13:33.925)
Well, you know what? Smart is not really an enterprise. We are 300 people in Europe. We are a brand that has 20 years of history, but by character, we are a startup. Because there was the whole thing when Mercedes sold this brand to this joint venture with Gili. So basically, we started operating as we are now, like six years ago.

it's very from, from, you know, when you think about like the organizational perspective, it is a startup. We just also have, of course, people who came to join us from Mercedes-Benz who bring understanding, expertise and all that. But generally, smart also had to build everything from scratch. And that was never a question that we need some structure. Yes. Now I'm like, I'm, we do have

bands, for example. just didn't, for a long time, we didn't refresh it. For a long time, we didn't ask the questions, we, are we fine with wine by scale? Do we need more? So all of that. So, but that was never a question of like, do we need it? It was always a question. We don't have for now the capacity in HR to dive into that because we have operations. We need to first do operations up and running so that we can hire people across those 11 entities. So I think it's,

I think it's a cultural thing. don't know. I feel that generally like the recognition of HR as a profession that also brings value to the business in Europe, it's more mature.

Daria Rudnik (15:14.478)
It's good to hear that. mean, like it. What do you so? one thing is grading and payroll and talent acquisition, which is kind of clear what kind of value it brings to business. The other thing is people development and leadership development, which kind of, yes, we it's sort of a nice to have. Yes, everybody tells it's important. But like, how do we see the real ROI on that? We don't know that. So what's?

What's your take on that? How is the situation with that in Germany?

Anastasia (15:47.358)
Well, I can just recall my conversation with my previous manager in Smart when we had to cut budgets. And she said like leadership program is the last thing we're going to touch in terms of like, we're not cutting this, you know, we need it. Let's cut some other benefits, but this we keep. And well, this also tells a lot, right? We are doing it now, by the way, like this leadership program.

So I think it depends very much still on the company from smart perspective, that's what we have and we really invest in that. And in every company I worked for the was some budget dedicated to leadership development and was usually centralized. More than that, we usually have a platform with coaching

professionals where you can, it's like a subscription based corporate thing when you, not only for leaders, but of course, like there are also coaches who are specialized in that. So you can reach out and get this support. Now in smart, we also have corporate, it's like not.

corporate coach, but a coach with whom we partner for like quite a while for now. In Babel, there was some also coaching support when the company was going through transformation for leaders. Delivery Hero, it was a separate budget for that. it's almost like a default, you know.

Daria Rudnik (17:35.057)
Mm-hmm.

Anastasia (17:36.492)
that coaching is needed for leaders. just need to ideally, know, ideally what I think is the most working framework here is to also involve HR business partner or if we are talking about C-level managers who are supported from CHRO or I don't know, it depends on like, right? So it should be connected to the...

feedback and the realities of the business because when this bridge is not there, there is a gap. Because then the leader can work with a coach on something that they think is actual, but without this feedback from employees, from peers, it's really hard to work very focused on the next steps in terms of leadership development.

Daria Rudnik (18:28.179)
Well, that sounds like a fairytale. Leaders support coaching and do go for coaching. They grow, they know that HR is important. That's amazing. But I am sure there's a trick. What are the challenges?

Anastasia (18:41.196)
It's more bureaucratized. So it's like, know, if you want to, if you have a low-performer case, you're going to most probably end up with mutual agreement. You're most probably going to end up paying some severance. And this is just a given in majority of European markets.

I think UK is more close to US, which is why there it's not, it's like, it's fine. It's more like also, it has more similarities with Russian market, I would say. Yeah, so this is one of the hurdles. And of course, one of the biggest ones is a works console. I mean, you know, it's like,

It's a balance, right? So generally, I think it's good that people have this opportunity. But I find that in most of cases in Germany, it's a bit too much. It's like and I cannot understand how the business can sometimes, you know, prosper having such a strong work council that, well, basically blocks some initiatives that are really, really truly needed.

So in tech, I've also worked with the companies with with with works console and It very much depends then who you actually have there So if you have if you're working in the company with works console It's better to have good relationship with with them because the power is huge and you know the speech

Daria Rudnik (20:34.13)
Mm-hmm.

Anastasia (20:39.2)
So if you have good connection, if you manage to establish good connection, it's going to help you. But it's a two way street. You cannot just from your side wish and work on that. There should be also some will to do that from another side. So I would think that those two are the biggest challenges also.

Daria Rudnik (21:01.587)
And you know what, I want to get back to what you said about like not bringing personal conflict to work, which is great. It's a great thing. But there is another thing is like bring your whole authentic self to work. And it feels like when you don't bring any personal personality, you're not fully authentic. What do you think?

Anastasia (21:25.514)
Yeah, I mean, I think, know, it's an interesting question. But for me, it's not about not bringing your authentic self. For me, it's about, you know, maybe two things assume good intentions, because like, you know, when you are angry with someone not doing exactly like how you would expect that to be, it doesn't always or

in the rare cases means that the person actually intended. So there should be some miscommunication and when you think about it like that, then you step into the communication from a different vibe and then the potential conflict, the potential for conflict is much less. But what I mean with this like personal conflict thing, it's like, I mean,

we can disagree and commit to do things together because we work in the same company and we, by default, we are aligned on that, that we want the best for the company and we are supporting their strategy of the company. So that's, of course, also not in 100 % of the cases, but majority of the managers joining the company.

they are already buy, they bought this whole strategy thing. Maybe in years frustration accumulates and then they behave differently, might happen. But what I saw back home, it was also like, you know, it was not the same thing. You had to work first on the whole, you know, topic of bringing everyone on board with a business strategy first, after they were hired.

And here some disagreements between the talk managers could also influence the business relations. This is something I never so far came across here. So it's not about not bringing authentic self. I think it's about accepting that the authentic self of other person.

Daria Rudnik (23:32.84)
Mm-hmm.

Anastasia (23:50.058)
and having this basic level of commitment to the strategy of the company that you're working for, or you joined, or you chose to join, right? It can happen over the time, but if you're already not really, I mean, supporting it, you can challenge that, you can bring your perspective, but then if nothing changes and for you it's really important, I mean, like, you know, maybe it's wiser to choose something else. Yeah.

Daria Rudnik (24:18.578)
Thanks. I so much agree. Absolutely. I like what you're saying. We are civilized adults. It's not just we don't experience feelings, but we can control. We are in control of our feelings and emotions. Trying to understand other person's perspective. Respecting authenticity, not just my authenticity, but authenticity of other people as well. And focusing on the common shared goal.

These are the critical things for productive work culture and conversation. And it's not like you don't have conflicts. It's just those conflicts are not personal. Those are the conflicts of ideas. Those when you exchange questions and challenge other people's assumptions without being offended by that. So yeah, that really is a great example. I love it.

Anastasia (25:09.784)
Yeah, thank you. Me too.

Daria Rudnik (25:11.336)
I know you have a story, you know you have a story about how people can handle the same situation differently with different outcome. Can you please share it with us today?

Anastasia (25:21.646)
Sure. So for me, it was really a striking experience of different approaches from a leadership perspective as well. So it was exactly like same situation, really. It was like a mutual agreement situation when we had to act fast. And well, I made a mistake in both cases.

But in first case, I had a manager who well, didn't tolerate mistakes really. And yeah, that was, you know, really like in all this stress and it's already like, you know, it was a big case. I cannot go much into detail, but it's most of the times those cases are quite stressful and you need to act quite fast. And you also...

you need to align with the lawyers, you need to get back to the person, you need to do it all very quickly. Yeah, and I did a mistake. It was something that is fixable. But like in the first scenario, the manager who didn't tolerate mistakes, first of all, like I was the one who then also, you know, had to...

be alone basically in this situation. And the only feedback was like, yeah, well, you made a mistake, that's your fault and all of that. And in my recent experience with smart, this is like big kudos to my current manager. because I not only felt and heard from the manager directly that, you know, we all make mistakes, you must be very much under pressure right now, I get it. So you already feeling like, you know, you are not alone in the boat.

but also he helped me to manage the situation further. So I was not the one who, you know, have to go through it all and also to correct myself. So I felt a supporter. I felt it's fine, you know, it's not it's not a big deal at the end of the day. It's correctable all as well. And that made such a big difference for me. And I think this is those are the moments where you feel

Anastasia (27:40.173)
what actually leadership is and how much it affects not only your career, but your self-esteem, I think. mean, more or less we're differently, we have different level of sensibility to those topics. But if you have a manager who always tells you that with each mistake that you are not okay, I think at the end of the day, you're going to believe it. And then when you have a manager who says, well, you

I'm here for you. It's fine. It's fixable. Let's cope with that together. That also influences the way you feel as a person, as a professional. Yeah, that's a big difference I felt. I generally, of course, you I like to rely on data, but I don't have so much experience of working in like 100 companies in Germany so far. So I am very limited, but from...

my experience from people whom I talk to usually when it's a company with some traditional German style management, which means very thorough, maybe not sometimes super dynamic, but good human qualities. This is something that then

you can see how the decisions are made with this in mind. You hire managers who share this same way of thinking and that's how this culture, you know, the culture survives, the culture strengths get stronger and even if you don't verbalize it, it's still there. And then if you really have the different approach from the very top, yeah, then

Daria Rudnik (29:27.764)
Mm-hmm.

Anastasia (29:35.471)
It runs very different. So I don't know if it's true to judge that if you go to a really old style German rooted company, that would be similar from my experience from people I work with here. This is true, but I don't have a lot of data to judge about it.

Daria Rudnik (30:01.525)
But it's great that we have these examples. It's great that we can see the companies doing things right. And like from your example, yes, it's hiring the right people that are aligned with companies culture, but it's also continuously developing leaders so that they keep growing, keep being good leaders for their people and for their organizations. Well, thanks. It's a great conversation. I have a few rapid fire questions for you to get to know you a little bit more personally.

Are ready for that? Okay. Are you a tea person or a coffee person?

Anastasia (30:30.958)
Yeah, I'm happy to do that.

person.

Daria Rudnik (30:37.683)
Dogs or cats?

Anastasia (30:39.246)
cats.

Daria Rudnik (30:40.981)
Would you rather take a message or a phone call?

Anastasia (30:44.124)
message.

Daria Rudnik (30:45.205)
Again. What did you want to be when you were a kid?

Anastasia (30:52.3)
I wanted to be a lawyer. Because in Santa Barbara, which we were watching with mom, I don't remember the name of the actress or even of the character she played, but there was a very bright one, that's why I think, and she was a lawyer.

Daria Rudnik (31:05.973)
Cool. What's one rule you've broken but don't regret?

Anastasia (31:12.8)
Yeah, I promise to think about this one, right?

Well, I guess.

In my mind, it was a rule, it's private. I thought always that I should first get married and then have a child with a man. So I did it otherwise. And you know, well, no regrets.

Daria Rudnik (31:43.012)
thanks for sharing. That's so sweet. Thanks for sharing your personal story with us. And thanks, Anastasia. It's great to reconnect. It's great to have you here on the show. I really love the insight that you shared about different cultures and different types of managers and how important is leadership development for building a strong culture, how important it is to see other person's perspective first and be aligned on the goal to have meaningful

Anastasia (31:46.35)
Thank you.

Daria Rudnik (32:08.041)
constructive conflict of ideas and not fall into personality conflicts. Well, thanks for being here with us. How people can find you if they wanna have the conversation with you, if they wanna connect.

Anastasia (32:17.4)
Thank you, Darryl.

Anastasia (32:22.638)
Yeah, I'm there on LinkedIn. Happy to connect. I'm also doing some career consultations as a side hustle of mine, especially for those who are assuming moving to Germany or assuming changing their companies when already in here. So yeah, happy to be helpful. Thank you, Darian, for the invitation. Great talk.

Daria Rudnik (32:47.025)
great. absolutely. The link to Anastasia's LinkedIn profile is in the notes of this episode. Reach out to her if you're thinking of moving to Germany or finding a job in Germany. And if you like this episode, please rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Stay tuned for the next episodes. Bye.

Anastasia (33:10.297)
Bye bye.