Oksana Izmailova, Chief Human Resources Officer of the international gaming holding PIN-UP Global, reflects on a successful 2024. She shared how HR contributed to scaling the business by 58%, the main challenges the team faced, and why the holding company was awarded the title of “Best Employer of the Year.”
– The year 2024 is almost at an end. How did it shape up for you and can you tell us about the key achievements of the PIN-UP Global HR team during this time?
– It has been a very dynamic and challenging year. And we have something to be proud of and something to talk about. For PIN-UP 2024 was a period of very rapid growth and scaling. The holding team has grown by more than 1400 people and today we already have 3900 specialists working all over the world.
Naturally, such growth, which is 58%, is a challenge for the HR team: in a tight timeframe, we searched for and recruited new people, scaled processes, adapted approaches and provided support for fast-growing teams. Thanks to flexibility, agility and synergy within HR, we managed not only to meet this challenge, but also to build processes that fit the new scale of the company.
By the way, I think that during this year we have become even greater experts in cross-cultural interaction. After all, we are now successfully adapting employees of 20 nationalities, and the holding company’s offices are represented all over the world.
– You also won a prestigious award this year as the best employer of the year. How did you manage to achieve this?
– Yes, indeed. This year, PIN-UP Global became the “Best Employer of the Year”. This is a credit to the entire HR team, which focused on developing a strong employer brand, attracting talent and building a positive employee experience. I am confident that this confirms: we are moving in the right direction, creating new trends and opening up opportunities for the growth of true professionals. At PIN-UP Global we believe that only by constantly improving processes, not stopping at what has been achieved, a market leader is able to reach real heights and set standards in the industry. And this is our working principle: to create trends, not to follow them.
– You say that one of the principles of your work is the development of professionals within the holding company. Have many specialists managed to grow in their positions this year?
– Yes, growing people internally is also one of the key objectives of our HR team. At PIN-UP, we are developing a culture of continuous learning. We have launched and are developing our own LMS. Since April, we have released 18 e-learning courses in four languages for different target audiences of the holding company’s employees. Among them are two management programs that teach HR processes and tools for selecting successful teams.
We provide about 90% of the required training with internal resources. Also on the basis of the corporate platform PIN-UP TEAM we launch the project Knowledge sharing space, which consists of a library, calendar of events and professional community. We are developing the PIN-UP Talent program to retain the best, create a variety of career opportunities for employees and stimulate internal recruitment. And, of course, we have a mentoring program in place. In other words, our holding invests a lot of effort in development and training.
– Can you give us some figures on how many specialists of the holding company have grown in their careers over the year?
– Yes, we take pride in helping our teams grow professionally. This year, 217 professionals have grown their careers from juniors to middles and seniors. And 52 employees have taken on managerial roles. In our holding, the HR team accompanies specialists during their career development: we help people adapt to new roles. And this process is realised by the function of people partners.
The rapid growth of the holding company provides an opportunity to move rapidly up the career ladder and try new roles, including managerial ones. Consequently, young managers often have no experience in managing teams. At this point, people partners become their partners and business coaches, whose advice compensates for the lack of experience at first. For example, a people partner can help prepare for difficult meetings, such as firing an employee or extending his or her probationary period, and together with the manager, set goals for the employee during the performance review.
– And how has the HR team itself changed over the course of this year?
– To ensure flexibility, efficiency and compliance with the requirements of the business and external environment, the entire HR function was revised and strengthened by professionals. Now we have five areas of responsibility. The Talent Acquisition, People Management, Learning & Development and HR Operations teams were joined by a new team – Compensation & Benefits. It is responsible for managing the fixed and variable part of employee remuneration, monitoring and analyzing the salary market, as well as for developing and expanding the benefits package for employees.
Today we have 202 people in our HR team. Therefore, synergy and coherence of work of all specialists is very important to us. We follow the principles of team problem solving and constant exchange of experience. We hold common meetings, understand common goals and objectives, and share common values.
– What do you think was the biggest trend of the past year and how did your team deal with it?
– This year there was a big demand for process automation and introduction of new technologies. We will be working on this in 2025 as well. But already now we were able to automate the onboarding process on the basis of PIN-UP TEAM, which allowed us to reduce the amount of manual work, optimise business processes and increase the efficiency of integrating new employees. And we also launched HR ChatBot – an assistant that answers frequently asked questions from employees at any time. And in the work of recruiters, we introduced an AI-tool that helps speed up work and control the quality of the process.
– And last, but not least, what are your main goals for 2025?
– There are a lot of goals and plans. Firstly, we will develop and improve the system for automating HR processes. In our dynamic industry, given the speed of the holding company’s growth, this is a very important task. Naturally, every day we try to improve the quality of hiring without loss in quantity and for this purpose we conduct research of new markets to attract specialists. Naturally, we will continue to work on this in the new year.
We also have a large-scale task in the direction of L&D development. We want to introduce gamification and interactivity tools into the Learning Management System functionality, develop a culture of continuous learning through Knowledge sharing space, including the creation of a virtual assistant for employees. We will also launch new training projects that will increase both personal and professional efficiency of employees, and introduce practices of individual development plans.
We also want to develop the “PIN-UP Talent” project – internal internships and career counselling. So there are a lot of goals and a lot of work. But we clearly see where we want to go by the end of 2025, and I am surrounded by a team of strong professionals. So I am sure that we will do well.
Don’t forget to subscribe to our Telegram channel!
