Monika Sonta

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to explore the experiences regarding diversity and inclusion in the professional context. The stories of female IT professionals included the discussion around enablers and blockers of career and development in IT and talking about worst and best daily experiences at the workplace.Design/methodology/approachThis is a qualitative study that presents the findings from four focus groups with 50 participants – selected female IT professionals working in Poland. The IT professionals were taking part in the Women in Tech Summit in Warsaw in 2019. LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® projective technique has been applied during the group interviews to help the participants express their experiences in a creative way.FindingsThe findings include conceptualization of the three main sources of inequalities: (1) Imbalance in rewards and recognition and performance visibility (2) Inability to build wider women-oriented strategic alliances and meaningful relationships around D&I and (3) Willingness but no practical mechanisms to contribute to the business value and being a part of meaningful activities and two concepts of how to improve employee experiences, namely: business strategizing based on daily meaningful experience and mentoring others and impacting business reality through creating professional alliances that matter and are recognized as business value generators as the key directions.Research limitations/implicationsThe research was conducted before the pandemic.Practical implicationsThe research creates a practical conversational framework for managers giving directions on how to talk about diversity and inclusion in the workplace using a perspective of “daily interactions” and “everyday employee experiences”.Social implicationsThe emerged concepts help to direct the corporate discussions around Social Development Goal No. 5 – Gender Equality in a practical business dimension.Originality/valueThe originality is brought by (1) LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® – the method of creative exploration used during the focused groups (2) social significance of gender equality in the technological roles and industries, especially in the context of reskilling approaches (3) Central and Eastern European perspective of the research.

The objective of this study is to present various practical applications of collage-based methods (visual bricolage) as a way of boosting creative discussions with students and helping them to express their knowledge and experience using visual representation. This viewpoint paper is based on the experience of twenty classes conducted with the MA program and postgraduate students at Kozminski University between March 2019 and December 2021, when online whiteboards and visual metaphors were used. The method used was participative observation, as the author also acted as the workshop facilitator. To observe the user’s action, the contribution tracking tool that is available on the mural whiteboard (Mural, n.d.) was activated. The explorations during the workshops revealed two elements of online classes: Conceptualization vs Illustration, to determine whether photos and pictures serve as an instrumental illustration in the background of the story, or they are important elements that convey the sense of the students’ statements. Moreover, the paper contains various practical findings that help to facilitate creative educational workshops remotely.

Software projects of all kinds should deliver results according to agreed term and conditions. However, they are prone to de-rail and be terminated without satisfactory and in-time outputs. According to the literature review most failures in software project occurs before producing a source code. The first part of the paper gives a short overview of Essence – a generalized and novel approach to construct a tailored software development methodologies and the abstract levels of project health attributes - alphas. The ultimate goal for project team is to provide high quality software under the given constraints. Examination of the alphas which present the kernel of Essence is performed on specific low-code development Erasmus+ project BeeAPEX. Then we present BeeAPEX project alphas. Finally, the states of the alphas in observed project are estimated to get an overview of the project progress and to identify the gaps between plan and realization.

The aim of this study was to explore and indicate key moments in the experience of the Polish mothers who are caregivers and worked professionally during a national COVID-related lockdown between March and May 2020. This is a mixed-methods study. The main data was collected by an online survey (n=153) run between 14 and 30 May 2020 asking parents about the most challenging and the most positive moments they experienced during a homestay with their children. The responses were coded thematically. Additionally, five in-depth interviews with HR Business Partners in multinational companies have been conducted. As a result, the list of “positive” and “challenging” moments has been established identifying challenging areas such as: organizing daily routines, especially meals for all family members, and selfperception of being neither a “good enough” parent nor a productive employee. The positive discoveries about this unusual reality included seeing the national lockdown as an opportunity...

Purpose In times of organizational thirst for employee engagement and meaning through designing corporate stories, the aim of this article is to explore and identify key sources (engines) of engagement during LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® (LSP) corporate learning pre-pandemic events of various types and size in Poland. Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual paper. The research was conducted using participant observation from the perspective of a certified facilitator of the method. This position ensures a prime access to the organizational events. Eight training sessions (four LSP and four non-LSP workshops) have been analysed using thematic analysis. The structure of thematic codes has been conceptualized and reflected as the EPIC framework. Findings The findings include (1) the importance of the experience of emerging realities as a key generator of engagement, (2) the significance of social collaboration and peer-to-peer interactions (experience of collective intelligence), (3) t...