Abilio Varela, general manager at TNT, an express courier company, tells The Leader his views on doing business in Russia, dealing with recalcitrant employees, employee motivation, and how he came to be in this line of work after initially having studied law.

The Leader: What is your educational background?

Mr. Varela: I graduated in law. I’d wanted to be a judge ever since I was a kid. I began to work for a shipping company while finishing high school and then continued working there while at college. As a result, I got interested in transportation, international trade, shipping, contracts and transport documents. I went to college with the intention of graduating in maritime law. But during the course of my studies, I realized that I preferred international law.

The Leader: How did you end up in the express courier business?

Mr. Varela: I worked for a transportation company in various capacities for 11 years. I never worked as a lawyer, though — actually, I don’t like the profession much and am more interested in law from an academic perspective. During my last three years at Digital, which is now part of the company Compaq, I worked very closely with TNT as a customer. At that time, they were looking for a general manager for the Moscow office, and when they knew I had decided to move back to Moscow they offered me the position.

The Leader: How long has TNT been in the Russian market?

Mr. Varela: For 11 years. When we started, we worked through an agent in St. Petersburg and, in 1993, we were registered ourselves. In 1998, we started our business in Saint Petersburg.

Does the work of the Moscow office differ from the work of TNT offices in other countries?

Mr. Varela: The work is the same here. The only difference is that we have to deal with customs, tax authorities, the state ecological inspectors and the traffic police. The main task is to compensate for all these difficulties. We provide the same services, the same management schemes and are the same organization.

The Leader: How do you measure TNT’s success?

Mr. Varela: We are a fairly large company but still very small by Russian standards. The size of a company is not necessarily the measure of its success. We are second place in the courier market. But that is not the measure of our success, either. The measure of success is profitability and customer satisfaction.

The Leader: What does success mean at TNT?

Mr. Varela: It depends on whom you ask: For my boss, success means improved customer services and expanding market share revenue and profit. TNT belongs to a company called TNT Post Group. Our responsibility to its shareholders is to increase company value in many different aspects. You increase company value by achieving bigger profit, offering more services, attracting and retaining talented people, investing in assets and exploring them well.

The Leader: How do you define personal success?

Mr. Varela: My boss wants me to be successful by getting more revenue, more profit. The company looks at it from the point view of the prospect of new investments. Other people use other criteria. The customers think that I am successful if I make their lives easier and offer a good service at a competitive price.

The employees think that I am successful if I am able to provide them with good working conditions, good compensations, an open environment and stability. Different people judge you in different ways. It makes life interesting, but at the same time it is difficult to please everybody.

The Leader: Is there a stereotype that women can’t occupy top positions in Russian business?

Mr. Varela: In Russia there are more talented women than men.

The Leader: Is it easier for expatriates to find jobs in your company than Russians?

Mr. Varela: I am the only foreigner here. The Russian employees love it here and integrate easily. I have never thought of hiring a foreigner over anybody else. I hire talented people regardless of where they come from.

The Leader: Do you place people with no work experience?

Mr. Varela: On the one hand, I believe in young talent. The company needs young people. They grew up in another world and have known new technologies from an early age. On the other hand, we need people with at least some experience, as it takes years to properly train a person, and we need results now.

The Leader: How do you train your staff?

Mr. Varela: Most people in our company have been with us for many years. We don’t need to train them, as they know their work already. But we do run training on how to sell better and how to resolve problems. But generally speaking, we want people to develop on their own. We want them to become more experienced and knowledgeable.

The Leader: What is an ideal employee like?

Mr. Varela: An ideal employee is a hard-working, talented, committed person. Someone who is determined to be successful in their work and who always wants to do better and better. Employees need to be balanced in their dress and behavior; they need to be presentable and positive. If you are happy with yourself and your family, that positive energy passes onto your work.

The Leader: When you see that an employee isn’t coping with his work, but has potential, do you transfer him or her to another department?

Mr. Varela: We don’t want to keep people who don’t have the right talent. You can’t always tell whether a person will be committed to the work just from a fabulous CV. Sometimes people jump from job to job and have wonderful CVs and then you find out that that person was pushed out everywhere and no one wants to work with them. There are always under-performers. When a person doesn’t cope with the tasks, we try to check whether it’s the fault of the employee or whether their training or their manager is at fault. We have replaced very few people, though.

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