Adam Manikowski, Żabka Polska, AmCham Diner at the European Economic Congress in Katowice 2022

Yes, we strongly sympathize with the Ukrainian community. We have many employees, collaborators, and even franchisees of Ukrainian nationality. Right from the start of Russia's aggression against Ukraine, within 12 hours we took very quick aid actions. They focused on several areas. The basic area is all aid related to food, medicines, hygiene products. Together with our business partners, we were able to quickly organize deliveries of food and hygiene products. Since the start of the war, we have donated over 500 tons of such items. On March 13, in cooperation with the city of Warsaw, we sent a special train containing 60 tons of food and hygiene products directly to Kyiv. Additionally, we pay great attention to supporting the families of our employees. Employees and collaborators are bringing families from Ukraine. We help with transport and finance housing for them. We also opened a special employee portal in a very short time, within a few days, where every person from Ukraine can easily find current job offers in our logistics centers or franchisee stores. In just one week, we had several hundred thousand visits. This is also an excellent form of help. We also strongly focus on psychological aspects. We have psychological support for anyone who needs a conversation or that type of support. We also ensure that our employees, if they want, have the space to engage in employee volunteering. Each of our employees can take 8 hours per month of normal working time to invest in aid activities for refugees from Ukraine. We also help, of course, we are in contact with reception centers at the International Poznań Fair and at the Polytechnic, which we support directly with food, water, and other necessary supplies. Our franchisees, who are entrepreneurs, also independently organize various aid actions, especially near the eastern border. We continue to support them so they have the right tools to organize and plan such actions. So we try to help on many different levels. We started very quickly, we constantly support employees, and this support is now entering a higher level because we know more or less the situation, but we do not stop; we constantly take new actions.

You are right, editor, the situations were dramatic. As a large organization with 8,000 stores, we have a very well-developed logistics network, and that allowed us to help very quickly and effectively where there was such a need. It also made us realize that even the smallest help is extremely important. Water, hygiene products – what seems normal to us – from the perspective of that situation, the most important thing was efficient logistics. And of course, big thanks to our franchisees, employees, and collaborators, because without them we would not have been able to do this; they were the engine of this help.

Yes, as we analyze how we can help, the employment area ranks very highly. Hence the employee portal I mentioned. But we also noticed a need for a different approach to a position like forklift operator, where it could be a job for women. So we organized an innovative program; we are one of the first retail chains in Poland to organize a special training cycle and system for women who want to become forklift operators. This job was often seen as a male profession, but absolutely not; with proper training, women do excellently in this position. And we see that we have more and more people from Ukraine applying for this type of position through our employee portal.

There is no problem here. Of course, we provide full support regarding all documentation and administrative preparation. As for language barriers, the training materials are in Ukrainian. But it's also about the format of work and the way of working on a forklift, to implement a person so that whether it is a man or a woman, they work equally well in this position.

There is a lot of space for Żabkas. We will continue to develop dynamically. We already have over 8,000 stores, and we will not slow down expansion. This happens, among other things, because we invest heavily in modern technologies, and it is precisely these data analysis methods that allow us to very well assess in which place and what format of store we should open a Żabka. With a very flexible format, we are able to operate in small towns, large towns, next to a larger store, next to a smaller store. And all this is supported by large analyses and artificial intelligence, which we implement well into our strategic management and development, which we will not stop. So you can expect, editor, that new Żabkas will be created all the time.