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Employer branding can sound like a mythical creature that you’ve heard of but never seen. 🦄
On the other hand, there are some companies that seem to be very good at it, attracting all the top talent.
So what is employer branding? How is it done? And who in your company should be responsible for it?
Employer branding can sound like magic art – Image source
In reality, employer branding is not a magical hoax, it’s hard and continuous work. Because almost every quality candidate now has a job or multiple competitive offers. Recruiting has turned into selling, drifting away from the buying concept — and companies, that don’t adapt, aren’t able to attract and hire the best talent.
In reality, there are many people working on it daily as a full-time job.
We reached out to the HR, branding, and recruitment teams in some cool companies – Bolt, Veriff, Scoro, Supermetrics, and TransferWise– to hear how they do employer branding.
A big THANK YOU to the employer branding and talent sourcing experts who took the time to help us out! 🙌
Anna Golubchenko, previously Lead Tech Recruiter in Bolt & now in Meta
Elisabeth Seepa, previously Recruitment Specialist in Veriff & now at Inbank
Marika Salkola, Senior People Operations Manager in Supermetrics
Mai Kand, previously People Operations Specialist/Recruiter in Scoro & now Talent and People Lead in Alpha3D
Jihan Ahmed, Employer Brand Global Lead in TransferWise & now Employer Brand and Culture freelance consultant
What Is Employer Branding?
Put simply, employer branding is making your company more attractive to job-seekers in order to hire top people. Why would someone want to work for you rather than a competitor?
Companies with a strong employer brand have a higher chance of getting top applicants to job offers and closing them after a round of interviews.
There’s no one activity that would make the employer brand. It’s a mix of various aspects.
Anna Golubchenko, Lead Tech Recruiter in Meta pointed out that people often value having a team of highly skilled people around them: “In Bolt, whether it’s engineering or marketing, you will meet colleagues from Google, Amazon, Facebook, Booking.com, TransferWise, Bloomberg and much more.”
Elisabeth Seepa, Recruitment Specialist at Inbank brought out that their company’s outlook to become one of the next tech unicorns is highly attractive for many job-seekers.
Marika Salkola, Senior People Operations Manager in Supermetrics added that having a good product plays an important role: people want to work on something meaningful and see thousands of others benefitting from their work.
Jihan Ahmed, previously Employer Brand Global Lead in TransferWise and now Employer Branding consultant, added that ownership and trust are among the things people value the most.
What are the main employer branding activities?
If there’s one sure thing we learned about employer branding channels, it’s that there is no one go-to channel or activity.
Employer Branding expert Jihan emphasised that their company prefers a very targeted approach with their employer brand and picks an individual mix of channels for each specific target audience.
On the bright side, there’s a wide selection of potential channels to use. 💁
Here’s a list of channels that the people we talked to mentioned:
Company’s website
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Glassdoor
Hiring events
Social media ads
Stackoverflow, Github
Referral bonus
Let’s take a closer look at each.
How to use your website as an employer branding channel
Most people applying to a job in your company also check out your website.
So having a high-quality home page is already an indicator of your company and its product.
On top of this, all the companies mentioned in this article have a dedicated Careers landing page with information about the company and available job offers.
TransferWise Careers page
The Careers page is the best place for listing all the employer awards, reasons to work in your company, and for sharing positive reviews from your current and past team members.
Elisabeth from Inbank added: “The importance of a website for employer branding is very significant, which means that one key consideration should be how to optimize your career page. Often, the career page is a candidate’s first step to familiarizing themselves with an organization and its values. If a company brand is not portrayed correctly through its career site, it could lose potential top talent and not attract the right candidates.”
How to use social media for employer branding
You can use all the main social media channels – Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn – for employer branding purposes.
If you have time to create beautiful images of cool company events and office life moments, you can set up a special Instagram account. Here are links to the team Instagram accounts of Scoro, Veriff and Transferwise.
Scoro team’s Instagram account
LinkedIn is a channel that most companies are already using for finding and recruiting top talent. You can also boost your brand awareness by sharing positive news about your company.
For example, Bolt recently shared a LinkedIn post about being the 3rd fastest-growing company in Europe. Pretty impressive, huh?
Bolt LinkedIn post
Want a less traditional approach? Here’s Jihan ex-Transferwiser:
“Rather than TransferWise saying it’s great to work here, we wanted to create authentic content that our candidates can relate to. That’s why we’re really proud of our employee vlogs.”
PS. And remember to live up the promise. Difference between promoted messages and the reality will quickly spread with Word-of-Mouth.
Does your company need a Glassdoor account?
If you plan to grow your company across multiple markets and have a team of 1,000+ people one day, you should create a Glassdoor account sooner rather than later.
According to Elisabeth (ex-Veriff), 50% of the current employees checked Veriff’s Glassdoor before they made their decision to start to work at the company.
Veriff’s Glassdoor page
Tip: If you’re just getting started on Glassdoor, ask your existing team members to write reviews, so that your account has a strong kick-off.
What to do with negative reviews? – Embrace them, learn from them, and make sure to keep them away in the future by hiring the right people and taking good care of them.
Should you organise employer branding events?
Employer branding events can be highly efficient if you know whom exactly you want to attract.
For example, Anna from Meta shared a hiring event they did in Moscow to attract software engineers (way back for Bolt). It was a coding contest and Bolt received 2000+ first challenge submissions – a huge number! To reach so many people, they used Facebook ads, articles and interviews with Bolt’s Engineering team members, Telegram channels and direct email marketing, and collaborated with Work in Estonia.
Bolt hiring event even had a custom website
TransferWise also organises regular hackathons to attract IT talent. See the Facebook event here.
It’s an event where students, hackathon enthusiasts, and TransferWise employees come together for two intense days of collaboration to turn big ideas into a working product. TransferWise mentors and talented participants will share their ideas and knowledge with one another to build something groundbreaking in FinTech.
TransferWise organises hackathons
In addition to helping the Estonian tech ecosystem grow, TransferWise will also attract early attention from talented young people.
Should you start organising hiring events?
It depends. If you’re looking to hire a large number of talented people working in highly competitive fields, having an in-person meeting ground might be a good idea.
However, if your company’s only looking to hire 10-20 people this year, organising a huge hiring event might be too big of an effort.
What are Stack Overflow and GitHub?
Stack Overflow is the largest online community for developers to learn, share their programming knowledge, and build their careers.
It is also a great channel for attracting top technical talent.
By having your team members actively contributing to the forums or by advertising your job offers through these platforms, you can build brand awareness inside the developer community.
We took a sneak peek to job offers in Stack Overflow and guess whose job openings first popped up? – TransferWise and Bolt!
Stack Overflow job offers are a good way to attract developers
Should you set up a referral bonus?
There’s also one critical channel that can only be built up over time and with considerable effort: word of mouth.
As Marika from SuperMetrics put it:
“For us, the power of word of mouth has increased a lot over time. This means that marketing is no longer the guardian of the brand. Rather, the employer brand is in the hands of your employees and candidates. Research shows that 92% of candidates trust the recommendations from people they know.“
Having a job referred by a friend you trust is a strong seal of approval.
And referral bonus is a great way to boost the word of mouth among your employees. Both Bolt, Veriff and SuperMetrics have a referral bonus system.
Usually, the referred candidates have to work for the company for more than a couple of months before referrers receive their fee. According to a survey, 71% of companies paid their employee referral bonus in full after an employment period between 45 days and six months.
So once again, what are the best employer branding channels?
It depends!
There are no universal employer branding channels, each type of role needs its own approach. We recommend that you start by defining your employer branding strategy and goals, and only then select the best channels.
❗Also, here’s a very important note from Anna from Meta:
“None of the channels above will work unless you take care of your candidate experience during the interviews, thus make sure that even if you are not proceeding with an offer they will still be recommending your company to their friends.”
Make sure your employer branding is in the DNA of your company, not just a facade you show to the outside world.
How to get started with employer branding in your company?
Ok, this thing called “employer branding” sounds pretty amazing: people considering your company a cool place to work at, more talented job applicants coming in…
So how to get started?
Here’s the advice from our favorite employer branding experts! 👇
Let’s get the employer branding started! – Image source
Start by taking a laser-focused look at a specific target audience you want to attract.
List all the possible reasons they aren’t applying to your jobs and why you’re struggling to hire the right people e.g. they just don’t know about your brand, they don’t want to relocate, people are applying, but they don’t have the skill set you need.
Then think about how you can change perceptions through your employer brand.
If someone hasn’t heard of your brand, you need to be out there, telling people what you do. If people don’t want to relocate, your messaging needs to talk about the positive impact of relocating. If you’re attracting the wrong skill set, be explicit in your messaging about what you’re looking for.
Marika Salkola, Senior People Operations Manager in Supermetrics
Start with the strategy. Who is the target audience that you want to reach?
Who are the potential candidates you want to hire, what’s their skill set, where are they located? Which channels can be used to reach them? What kind of content are they interested in?
What is your brand’s unique story that makes you stand out? Interview your employees about why they love working at your company and what made them in the first place. Always be authentic in your employer branding!
The first and the most important thing is to understand why you are special – what makes working in your company better than elsewhere? Once you know that, start spreading the word.
First, define the message: It is important to first define your employer branding messages and goals.
Create an authentic message and tone of voice for your brand, so the employees and also candidates know exactly what to expect from working in the company. Make a plan and define the channels to promote your employer brand.
Don’t forget to nurture your culture: Employer brand is a reflection of your culture, and so building a positive culture is the root of a strong employer brand.
Don’t copy other brands, but still look around and check what other companies are doing.
Start with the basics: Glassdoor, LinkedIn and Wikipedia (sounds weird I know).
There is no need in buying a special offer from LinkedIn for a company page from the very beginning, just keep it simple with basic information and posting updates, articles or photos of your achievements, good news or daily life.
Do not forget to invite your employees to join the company on LinkedIn and let them share and like the content from the company page.
The same with Glassdoor: fill the initial information, connect to your ATS for automated job posts, and invite your team to leave reviews, feedback about interviews and compensation. There will be not only positive reviews, listen to those carefully, take into consideration common points and remember that all companies on different stages of growth have received bad staff. It’s inevitable, and a good way to improve interviews and internal processes.
If your applicants and future candidates start to research your company, what is the first thing that comes up in Google search? – Think about thefirst potential touchpoints.
iGaming company Betsson Group invites all FinTech professionals to a meetup on the 30th of March in Tallinn. Open to all curious professionals in the digital space and especially with experience in payments technology. Join the network!
Betsson Group’s FinTech Meetup on the 30th of March
Approximately 700 of 2200+ Betsson Group employees are tech and product professionals. With a strong global presence and revenue exceeding €777 million in 2022, Betsson Group continues active recruiting across all departments.
Interested in taking your FinTech experience to the next level? Take a look at their openings in MeetFrank:
Betsson Group, operating Betsafe and SuperCasino brands in Estonia, offers casino, sportsbook and other games. From a single slot machine in 1963, Betsson Group is now one of the largest companies within the global iGaming industry.
Year 2023 marks the 60th anniversary of Betsson Group – reflecting stability and company’s strong background. And it shows in the results. Despite the challenging market conditions in 2022, Betsafe delivered 15% growth. The profitability makes way for new investments in new markets and constant development of the tech platform.
The company mixes its heritage with a forward-looking and tech-savvy mindset. As the iGaming industry is ever-evolving, Betsson Group recently moved to a brand new office at the heart of Tallinn. When their first office was opened back in 2002, there was only one single employee. Only one! This has grown into 120(and constantly 📈) people, working mostly in the commercial and tech teams. Nevermind the 2200+ colleagues from 72 nationalities Betsson Group has at other locations.
Betsafe is also a loyal supporter of the local sporting scene. Sponsoring different sports disciplines, federations, leagues, and individual athletes. Lithuanian basketball league, Paide Linnameeskond, Ott Tänak – to name a few. Also one of the most legendary sports commentators Kalev Kruus hosts Betsafe Podcast.
At the SiGMA Europe 2022 Betsson Group won the Responsible Gaming of the Year Award for the second consecutive year. This category recognises industry leaders of safer gaming.
Enabling employee growth and developing their knowledge, skills, and capabilities is more critical than ever for driving business performance. One of the companies that excels at Learning & Development (L&D) activities is Oxylabs – a tech company and a front runner in market innovations for web-scraping infrastructure solutions.
We sat down withFrederika Dovgal, Learning and Development Manager, and talked about how Oxylabs is nurturing its internal resources and creating talent growth.
🔵 How would you describe Oxylabs as a company?
Oxylabs is a hyper-dynamic company driven by people full of creative potential, often figuring out the way forward by experimenting, sometimes failing but most importantly – always learning.
🔵 What kind of value does Learning and Development create at a company?
Well-structured L&D strategies can, over time, create innumerable benefits. To begin with, aligning L&D strategies with company directions leads to ongoing, mutual growth for both the company and its employees.
Businesses have the opportunity to hire a junior professional and see that person grow until they reach a senior position. Over time, the employee’s overall value grows together with the company. It’s also valuable to have an L&D strategy because it promotes loyalty. These days people tend to look for a working environment where they can learn and grow personally and professionally, meaning a simple static day-to-day job is not enough anymore.
It’s a win-win both ways. The companies benefit from attractive value propositions and natural employee growth, whereas employees get all the necessary tools to take all they can from the company.
So, in our case, Oxylabs excels at this because the hunger for knowledge is one of the critical values. We encourage people to learn by trial and error. There is no fear of failure, as we promote thoughtful feedback, openness to failure, and knowledge sharing. Thus, when faced with a challenge or a potential failure, we see it as an opportunity to learn and grow.
Combined with other L&D tools, we are able to create an environment where people are hungry for more challenges and knowledge.
🔵 What are the different professional and personal growth opportunities offered at Oxylabs?
“On paper,” our offer is more or less similar to any other larger IT company in the market. We offer internal & external training, organize conferences, provide access to online learning platforms, and constantly update our book library and others.
What is probably unique compared to the competition is that we provide guidance and support on the available resources based on employee, role, or team development needs. A lot of the effort goes into collecting these puzzle pieces to create a coherent picture of the professional and personal growth opportunities, aka specialized learning journeys directed towards career development. For this, we often apply a blended learning approach.
🔵 What measures do you take to promote learning and development?
First and foremost, we aim to establish a continuous learning culture, where learning is not happening in one-off instances, but rather make it a constant process with direct connection and impact on the job that can still be as fun.
We do feel a constant demand for learning from our colleagues, regardless of whether we promote it intentionally or not. That said, we often organize one-off initiatives to nurture such a learning culture and engage those who haven’t yet found their angle for growing.
An example of this would be the Learning Month initiative, where we organize an intense amount of various training sessions on different topics to encourage maybe a bit more passive people to participate and ignite their passion for learning.
But looking at the broader picture, people often forget that they have all the resources needed to grow or do not know where to start or what kind of value learning can bring. That’s why aside from the continuous learning model, we have to do some marketing actions to help newcomers engage in L&D opportunities or empower those who may lack some initiative.
Overall, once a person wants to grow, all we need to do is help them navigate their growth path.
🔵 How do you manage training tech and administrative teams as diverse as they are? Do you have a different approach depending on the skills needed to develop?
I would say the approach is more or less the same. However, there are a couple of layers to these training programs.
In the first layer, tech and administrative teams share everyday training needs. For example, the World Economic Forum has named the following top skill types of 2025 – problem-solving, self-management, working with people, technology use, and development. So, these competencies are vital, whether you work in tech or administrative teams.
Apart from core competencies that administrative and tech people share, any role, whether a tech or managerial position, has its specifics. I will never be able to teach tech roles any tech topic, nor, most likely, will external training fully cover the needs of how things are done in different companies based on those companies’ processes and standards.
Here, as I like to say, the role of L&D is “connecting people.” Sharing common challenges and experiences can be the best source of knowledge, and our part as L&D is to bring these people together, be it through mentorship programs or guilds.
🔵 What kind of training do you organize? Are those just professional growth training, or are the options to choose personal growth training?
We do both as it goes hand in hand, and it actually loops back to the training program layers we discussed earlier. Self-management and working with people are some of the fundamental (inter-) personal skills employees of all roles share a need. We have open training on personal effectiveness and collaboration, and there are always online resources available with plenty of content on personal growth.
For professional growth, as mentioned earlier, we are working on job role-specific learning journeys, a big part of which is based on internal expertise and knowledge sharing.
We offer over 40 training subjects, internal language courses, access to over ten online learning platforms, and an internal library. It’s worth mentioning that these are just internal resources, with regular external training depending on the people’s learning journey needs.
🔵 Do you use more internal resources or reach out to external services?
We blend both, yet we search for resources internally first, especially if we are talking about the layer where the subject knowledge primarily resides with the people of a particular role.
We see more long-term value and better applicability of internal resources, not talking about the benefits of building a stronger community where colleagues not only take but also give and, in such a way, actively participate in shaping our learning culture.
But mind that when we talk about internal subject matter experts (SMEs), it often is that SMEs know the subject very well but are not always very good at explaining it to, say, junior colleagues. For this purpose, we also need to strengthen internal trainers’ competencies. And this we do with the train-the-trainer program provided by L&D.
🔵 Are the people keen on participating in the training? What persuades them the most?
Generally, there is no need to force training onto people just for the sake of it. Since our company’s culture is based on feedback and continuous growth, learning in various shapes and forms is already attractive to people. For example, over the last quarter, over 70% of all Oxy people participated in at least one kind of training. I believe this is a significant result, considering that we have over 350 people at the moment.
The main reason behind such a high engagement rate would probably be the overall culture at the company. Furthermore, at some point, a mob mentality comes into play. When the vast majority of people participate in training, conferences, etc, others might start feeling left out, a FOMO feeling of some sort.
Furthermore, the variety of the training also helps. Our colleagues can find at least several training topics that are appealing to them, so it’s easier to attract and get them engaged.
🔵 Do you have any success stories of people who managed to grow internally? What were the key reasons for growth?
We have many examples of both vertical and horizontal growth. Each of them has displayed different skills and qualities that led them to advance their careers, so it isn’t easy to describe all of the cases. Some have shown adaptability. Others – just straight up had a great learning curve and managed to hone their skills.
We launched a career ambassador initiative to help inspire other people for career growth. They can meet other employees willing to advance their careers, discuss growth opportunities, and share their experiences and success stories. We want to inspire people to escape their comfort zone and move on to the next zone – the learning zone.
🔵 What is the learning zone model?
The Learning Zone Model’ was developed by Tom Senninger, a German Educator and Adventurer, based on the Lev Vygotsky Zone of Proximal Development. The model encourages us to see positive experiences as learning experiences and helps individuals to understand and expand their boundaries and ‘comfort zones.
🔵 Could you share the most popular or successful training topics?
Effective Communication, Public Speaking, and Problem Solving. These topics cover some of the core competencies of the nearest future, or should we say present already?
Entain Baltics & Nordics is the largest iGaming operator in the Baltics with an ambition to expand well beyond, becoming one of the leading online gaming companies in other regions of Europe as well. The company offers iGaming products through many of its brands and is a truly diverse company with more than 720 people from more than 15 countries working from 7 different offices all across Europe.
We talked to Oleg Karpušenko, the head of the HR department at Entain Baltics & Nordics, about how to build a great company culture that values diversity and inclusiveness and what are the essential elements for creating a friendly and down-to-earth company culture.
🔵 Let’s start with the first question. What exactly does Entain Baltics & Nordics do?
Previously known as Enlabs we are now known as Entain Baltics & Nordics and we represent the iGaming industry, which is well developed in the Baltics. We’ve been in this business for nearly twenty years by now, ever since 2006.
We offer our customers five key products.
Online casino with a variety of games.
Live casino with an actual dealer on the other side of the screen who communicates with players.
Sportsbook, where it is possible to bet mostly on sports, but on specific occasions – also on elections, Eurovision, Academy Awards, etc.
Poker.
Bingo/Lottery.
We have a variety of brands with different products. “Optibet” and “Ninja Casino” are the biggest ones which perhaps you might have heard of. In total, we have eight brands as part of our company portfolio.
Essentially, we’re offering the purest form of entertainment. Compared to many illegal operators, which don’t have a license to operate on the market, we operate in the licensed and regulated markets with governmental institutions supervising and controlling our operations. We are on good terms and relations with these institutions, and we comply with every market’s rules and regulations.
We have also introduced different programs to address customer protection issues, and we have a department where our employees track the behaviour of players. If we see abnormalities, for example, someone is playing and losing non-stop, then we act upon it and limit or even restrict their activity. We have always said that we are up for fun, and as soon as the element of fun for our customers disappears, no one is winning.
🔵 Entain Baltics & Nordics operates globally, with offices in Tallinn, Riga, Marbella, Vilnius, Helsinki, Stockholm, and Valletta. In your opinion, what are the biggest advantages of a diverse workplace?
There are many aspects to it, but one peculiar thing is that a team consisting of diverse people will definitely help create better results, translating them into success for the company.
It has happened organically for us. There’s a reason why we have an office in all those locations. Having those gives us many opportunities and advantages. For example, people get to travel between different offices, change their environment, meet other people and exchange ideas.
🔵 What steps have you taken in your organisation to make Entain Baltics & Nordics a diverse and inclusive workplace?
Firstly, the decisions which have shaped Entain Baltics & Nordics into what it is today are because of actions the company has executed from top to bottom. One of the main key success factors is our CEO George Ustinov who has always supported all the crucial changes and trusted me as Head of HR as well as an entire function of HR and what it can bring to the table. There are quite many companies where CEOs see HR function only as a cost or as an administrative function tasked only with preparing employment contracts and doing the paperwork. I am happy and proud to say this is not the case with us.
We would never prefer to hire people from one specific country/region, only because it’s harder for us to relocate them or have a prejudice that they will not perform well. Sadly, if we look at this aspect broader, I think this kind of mindset seemingly exists in the heads of directors of departments and sometimes even CEOs. We have infused our philosophy and attitude into everyone within our company. That’s the first layer of diversity at our company.
Because of this trust from the top and a heavy support from my HR team, as well as fellow peers (heads of departments), we built the HR function the way I thought it had to function in the company. There is no internal company “culture” where there is a need to receive a formal approval for every little thing. I have heard and witnessed myself, from my previous experience, that in other companies there is a very high level of bureaucracy and over-formalised twenty-five layers of approvals to manage even the simplest things. This requires to go through unnecessarily plenty of approval stages, making it hard to get things done fast and efficiently.
Every day in our company we make an utmost effort to treat our people like they would want to be treated – we actually listen to them and make an effort to satisfy their needs when/if possible. We have built a very collective and friendly team where people communicate easily, openly and transparently. Yes, there is a certain hierarchy and a rational, logical, efficient organisational structure, but there aren’t too many unnecessary hierarchical levels which usually tend to complicate things. All our heads of departments/functions are friendly, down-to-earth, helpful, approachable and supportive. We do operate an “Open Doors” policy and, for example, if a junior level employee needs to talk to our CEO, they can just come in and do that. No need to “apply for an appointment” or operate other silly corporate “bs”.
Four and a half years ago, when I joined the company, we had under 200 employees. Today we are a Team of over 720 people. People choose to stay in the company and our employee turnover rate is healthy. Also other key HR KPIs such as overall engagement and motivation scores, as well as eNPS (Employee Net promoter score) are very good. This growth of the business and actual HR KPIs allow me to believe that everything I have just described about our culture, diversity, and inclusiveness is working in real life and correlates with reality and is just not existing in my utopian imagination.
🔵 In your opinion, why is diversity and inclusion in the workplace important?
Ultimately, it gives people the opportunity and an environment where they feel good, safe and protected. HR department employees, with a strong support of other heads of departments, are actively participating in creating this environment. The more diversity and inclusivity initiatives we do, the more present and happy people we get to have in our company. This directly translates into their output and performance and this in turn – directly into the company’s results and success.
I will gladly give another example of how we embrace, promote and celebrate diversity in our company. June, as you probably know, was the worldwide month of Pride celebration. For the first time in the history of our company this year we started talking candidly and openly about this topic with our employees, inviting the director of the LGBT Association in Estonia to discuss this topic during an open forum.
My logic is telling me – even if it is just one person who feels unsafe or insecure, and the same person sees or notices this effort from the company, my guess is that this person would think, “Okay, that’s good to know – I’m actually working in a company where they accept you being gay, lesbian, queer or transgender.”. If, let’s imagine, this employee comes back to their family and friends, and says “You know what? I am working in this awesome 21st century-minded company where they openly talk about these things!”, then for us in HR it is totally and completely worth our entire effort.
We are also aware and are openly discussing aspects where we know we are not exactly the best example when it comes to diversity. For instance, if I look at the top management team and the percentage of females represented on that level – I know for sure there is still room for improvement for us. And this is the exciting bit right here – we are aware where we can be better, and we are planning to work on that front to ensure higher gender equality and representation.
🔵 What metrics do you have in place to measure the success of your inclusiveness in the company?
We have quite a lot of metrics. Firstly, we have our key HR KPIs. We are constantly measuring and tracking our employee turnover rate (monthly, annual, voluntary, involuntary, etc.). We also consistently track our employee engagement scores, as well as eNPS. If we’re looking at more particular metrics, we have identified and set some specific diversity-related metrics, for instance, percentage of gender split.
Few other KPIs are related to pay equality. On that front – we have just done our internal analysis, and we are quite pleased with our findings. What is super important in my opinion is to measure those KPIs regularly, not doing an employee engagement survey once per year as some other companies still do. And this is exactly what we do in Entain – we follow and track our HR KPIs on a monthly, sometimes even on a weekly basis.
🔵 That’s an excellent thing! I’ve heard about companies doing their employee satisfaction surveys only once per year, usually during Christmas when everyone is happy because they received a bonus. That means they’re distorting reality.
The drawback in this situation is that most likely people in HR or heads of departments get a very tiny glimpse into employee satisfaction. They know how people felt on that specific day, once per year, giving them no valuable insights over the longer term.
We in our company are using an awesome HR tool called Officevibe, which enables us to track daily/weekly/monthly engagement rates and satisfaction, and measures happiness, relationships with peers, and a bunch of other relevant aspects. It allows employees to answer the questions completely anonymously.
Check out Entain Baltics & Nordicscareer page and open positions:
🔵 Could you name the essential insights, conclusions, or takeaways you’ve learned from the process of building a diverse and inclusive workplace?
I think the key to success here is actually quite simple: to genuinely, truthfully like and want to take care of people. Every time someone approaches you with an issue, question or complaint, it is essential to find the time and opportunity to listen to this person, give advice or consult, and help find a solution. It is vital to pay attention to your people. And the truth is quite sour in my opinion – if you are busy once and do not have time for that colleague the next time – very likely they will not come back to you. Ever.
I am hopeful that this behaviour of mine, and actions – the way I have been treating our employees throughout the years – have been noticed by my peers, superiors, subordinates, fellow colleagues, and that they have been inspired by it and have also adopted this way of thinking and the mindset of how people have to be treated in the organisation.
One more thing I will gladly share with you on a closing note – in order to build a diverse and inclusive workplace – you need to have a clear understanding, plan and a roadmap which combined will answer all of these questions: why do you want to build such an environment? What advantages will it give you? Do you have your CEO’s and colleagues’ back for it? Do you have the tools and resources for it? Are you sure it will be sustainable in your organisation? And most importantly – are people ready for it? If you have an answer for the majority of these questions – brace yourself and get ready for the journey! And I promise you it will be a very exciting and exhilarating one!
