I would never be a leader for the paycheck…
Chocolate, tissues and “always an open door”. Good leaders must think of their colleagues in every situation, so they always have to have these three things at hand, says Eszter Árvai, who considered the satisfaction of her colleagues to be the most important thing as a leader rather than figures. Moving quickly through the ranks of IKEA, she soon became a store manager at IKEA Budaörs. Then Country HR Manager in Austria, i.e. she reached the highest international position from Hungary at the furniture giant. She knows she “overdid” the work, but she says she learned from it and now passes on her experience as a mentor and coach further.
One morning in July 2017, well before opening, the employees of IKEA in Budaörs received the evacuation signal: they were to leave the building immediately. Eszter Árvai, the store manager at that time, was annoyed that this was happening on the very day when she wanted to say goodbye to all her employees at a common breakfast. After five and a half years, she went to Austria to take over the country’s HR Management there, and her decision was already known in Budaörs. Then someone in the official gathering place in the parking lot tapped her shoulder to get her to look back. “Thank you, Eszter!” – this text was displayed on an approximately 20 x 2-meter Molino on the store’s facade.
“And everyone was standing there with a white rose in their hand. I got goosebumps and cried of course,” she says.
However, according to her, she was a very strict leader: if the employees unloaded the trucks into the sales area earlier than their working time, they could not go home any sooner, and she gave them new tasks. They had to arrange the products on pallets so the customers would arrive in a clean, well-organized, tidy store. “They accepted that I had a strong customer focus. Based on internal measurements, for years, we were the first in the “most reliable store” category among the almost 400 IKEAs operating worldwide.” In five years, Eszter turned the Budaörs IKEA store performance from a loss into a multi-million EUR profit. She managed 350 people and a business worth 30 billion HUF; in the best period, they had two and a half million visitors a year.
After a while, she felt that the “classic business manager” image did not fit her. “Many store managers started the day by looking at the previous day’s turnover, but I was more interested in what was going on with my people.” She knew the names of three-quarters of her team; the cleaning ladies still jumped on her neck when she showed up as a customer. I witnessed something similar myself: we were talking in Graphisoft Park in Budapest, and one of the employees of the Planteen canteen there, suddenly appeared and greeted Eszter with sincere respect – he was formerly the kitchen production manager of IKEA Budaörs.
The “frog”, palette and fatigue
“Look, I have two small children, I can show a diploma and language skills, as well as diligence, but I do not have any professional experience. If it’s not me whom you want, no problem, but then I’d rather go now before starting the interview.” Eszter said this to the three HR managers sitting opposite in the last round of the five-round selection procedure. They smiled at her honesty and hired her as a management trainee at IKEA. She didn’t necessarily want an eight-hour-a-day job with her two small children, but her fellow students whispered in her ear constantly that she ruined her career by having children early and that she thought she would test herself on the labour market.
“My son Bence checked in at the end of the third year at the university, so at my final accounting exam, I couldn’t fit in the bench; they put an extra chair for me from the side,” she laughs. She completed the last two years alongside her son and was already pregnant with Sára at the thesis state exam. “Many people started to feel sorry, and if you don’t boost your self-confidence, it’s easy to be insecure about what I’m going to do with me with zero work experience.”
She was sitting on the shores of Lake Balaton with her family when she saw the job advertisement in HVG that IKEA was looking for management trainees. That day was the application deadline, her husband took a photo of her in the car, and they quickly looked for a printer where she could print her resume, then ran to the post office with the letter. As she later found out, almost a thousand applied for the eight positions. After employing her as a trainee, she had to go through every available station in the store. She learned how to use a “frog” to adjust pallets – she enumerates. She laughs at my uncomprehending look and explains that a “frog” is a manual forklift, and a pallet is a pallet in the technical language of transporters. At that time, her daughter was only a few years old – fortunately, thanks to the Swedish work culture, she could stay home with her on sick leave at any time.
After just three months, she took over two departments, even though she says she was so inexperienced that she could barely find the bathroom in the store yet. Then she moved up the ranks every year or two, was interior design manager, then marketing manager, and later helped build a department store in Zaragoza, Spain (she managed the Spanish interior design group). She was so conscientious that when she met an old lady at the accessories department, who came especially for a vase just before Xmas, she could crawl behind the pallets to get it because it wasn’t exposed on the shopfloor yet. “I realised that your greatest strength can become your greatest weakness,” she says.
After four months in Zaragoza, during which she flew home every two weeks, she returned feeling exhausted and wanting to quit the company. She thought she could not perform as well as she would like, although it was not yet visible outside. Her Store Manager told her that she had put so much on the table by now that she should go home, rest, and raise her hand when she was ready to return. She needed seven months. “It’s a leadership attitude I experienced that I’ve been able to pass on to many people later on”, she says. Shortly after her return, she was asked to take over the IKEA Budaörs store as a store manager. “At least let me be a deputy first since I only have eight or nine years of store experience!” she asked. But they said she could do it anyway.
In the meantime, I let myself down…
As a child, Eszter played competitive athletics, regularly winning county championships. “I’ve always been a good student and athlete, and I’m proud of it.” She modestly adds that she was more diligent than talented. Even during the interview, she almost apologises, and in the meantime, wise, simple sentences poured on me – and she smiles incessantly. She says her endless perseverance stems from her childhood; she completed her task conscientiously in every situation. The teenage rebellion was also left out of her life; her parents’ philosophy was that everything could be done even better.
When she became a store manager, IKEA in Budaörs performed below its potential; after the 2010 crisis, it had a notable disadvantage in not knowing the customers’ exact needs well enough. “If you want good sales, the most important thing is to know your customers. Who they are, what’s important to them, and their biggest frustrations with their home. And that’s what we need to help them with.” According to Eszter, the key to success was that the commercial strategy received from the region was adapted very precisely to local characteristics and needs. In addition, she managed to create an engaged and strong management team and organisational culture in Budaörs.
“Chocolate, tissue and an always open door! I have always told all leaders that these are the most important things. If a colleague has a problem or is insecure, they should always be able to go to the manager, and then other tasks must be put aside.
After her second or third year in Budaörs, she was already intensively sought after by IKEA abroad; for example, she was called to India as a store manager. “That would have been the first IKEA in India; it was very honourable but not an option with two children,” she says. In Hungary, however, there were no higher-up assignments, and she did not want to leave the company then. When a headhunter asked what was most important to her in the workplace, she answered organisational culture. “Then it won’t be easy to switch,” was the regular answer. She was offered several positions in Austria, and ultimately, she decided that HR was closest to her.
Four days a week in Vienna, one day in the home office – this was the deal in the summer of 2017. At that time, the seven stores (plus pickup points) were already a 650 million euro business with three thousand people, and she was responsible for the entire country’s HR strategy. Now she sees that she should have assessed the situation better, but she did not. “The unions are powerful in Austria, and I tried to work with them well, and I think I succeeded with relentless energy. In the meantime, there was also a lot of business pressure on the company to transform the organisation.” With the rise of e-commerce, a completely new organisational chart had to be devised, and tasks had to be redistributed – and according to Austrian legislation, if the change affects at least five per cent of the employees, it can be vetoed by the trade unions. Eszter negotiated with representatives and government representatives for six or seven months – and because she wanted to go through this with all her conscience, she got exhausted.
In the meantime, she drove 50,000 kilometres in a year and a half, going home on Thursday evening and back on Sunday evening or Monday morning. “I tried to balance work and family, but with this level of fatigue, it was difficult to spend quality time with friends and the children,” she says. Her relationship and personal life also suffered from the much overtime – because she didn’t work eight hours a day – and after a year and a half, she thought it better to get on the train. “When you notice seconds falling on the inside lane on the highway, it’s not okay for a mother of two.”
At this point, not only her environment but also her health started to give signals. “In the fall of 2018, I already felt something was wrong. My strength has always been reliability and care for others; I felt I could not let my colleagues down, no matter what. But in the end, actually, I just let myself down in the whole thing. My body had to show me hard to think now. In the end, it took almost another year and a half before I took the step I should have taken before.”
One Sunday evening, sometime in January 2020, she boarded the Vienna Express as usual, but as the train approached the border, she began to shake. “I took the suitcase and the cat, who had been commuting with me for years, and at the border, I didn’t even think about it; I just crossed to the other side of the platform. I got on the train travelling in the opposite direction, and came home. Afterwards, I properly said goodbye to the Austrian organisation and my team.”
She says that her job abroad was a fantastic opportunity to impact big things; she was responsible for 3000 people and earned very well. “But I have never been and never will be a leader working for the paycheck only. If you no longer have the energy or positive vibration, it is better to move on. Today, burnout is a buzzword; even though it is possible to catch the point when the process can still be reversed, prevention is primarily necessary. It matters, and it is cool that you can wear jeans and a T-shirt at work on Fridays and that there are yoga classes at your workplace, but these will never solve the root cause of the problem. There is a career level where it is impossible to live your private life to the fullest.
“The Devil’s Offer”
Half a year after quitting was all about recovery, she says, for the first time in her life, she was able to slow down. Then came a lot of self-blame and doubt as to whether she had made the right decision. With his extensive HR, marketing and commercial experience, she established her consulting firm, “Esterest”, last year, but she promised herself that she would not push the work too far again. Before our interview, she was approached by an innovative electric car manufacturer in Amsterdam. She lives in both countries because she lives in a happy relationship with her Dutch partner – and they offered her a salary for a European management position that she did not even dare to dream of, ever. But she said no. “And it was a kind of devil’s offer,” she laughs. “It would be easy to slip back if you are conditioned to work diligently, a lot, and never be satisfied with yourself.”
Currently, her assignments come mainly from contacts acquired during the IKEA days. Japan recently asked her for a mentoring role, and in Hungary, she supported the two biggest e-com company’s Emag-Extreme Digital merger on the joint company’s HR strategy. She also works with a dynamically developing, people-oriented IT company- Bluebird. “Today’s generation in their 20s and 30s leave their job if they don’t like something. Company managers must take the challenge and understand that losing talent today is a luxury. In Austria, I calculated at the time that a new employee from recruiting to arriving to an “in the role” position costs around ten thousand euros.”
She has been a member of Decathlon’s supervisory board for the 4th year and has been in contact with them since her time as an IKEA store manager. “I liked the way Eszter always treated her employees, that it was such a people-oriented organisation,” says Gergely Román, who at the time ran the Decathlon store in Budaörs, and today manages the company’s e-commerce business.
The two companies’ cultures were similar, so their acquaintance quickly became a series of conversations. The two stores organised many joint programs, for example, on children’s days. “I later recommended her as a board member,” says Gergely. According to him, Eszter brings different aspects to the decision-making process with her holistic vision and commercial and HR experience.
“Gergő and I had been regularly inspiring each other for some time; he once asked if I should go over and tell his colleagues what I think about leadership. I said sure, why not. But I didn’t know that the manager of all Decathlon stores in Hungary would be sitting there,” laughs Eszter. Of course, she found her way into the situation after a few minutes of squinting. According to Gergely, it is typical that she remembers such a case so much, while he does not. “Eszter knows much more, and her personality and knowledge are much more valuable than she thinks she is,” he says. “And it is also very „Eszter-like” that she takes a deep breath and gathers his brilliant thoughts in seconds.” (W)