Alina Amza, Superbet: Now, more than ever, there is a need for a culture of care for employees

Mihai-Alexandru Cristea 08/10/2021 | 17:04

At BR’s Inspiring Voices #EqualFuture conference, we talked about Gender Equality, Diversity & Inclusion, and Alina Amza, Group Wellbeing & Inclusion Director at Superbet, a global company with employees of many nationalities, talked about the challenges of the new reality and how the company managed to homogenize the diverse human factor, with different personalities and cultural specificities, with the help of a well-developed inclusion strategy that also led to an increase in productivity.

 

“Our company is on a mission to “excite the world” in which we have two key enablers, one is innovation and the second is technology. Precisely because we hire globally and bring in highly trained people from many countries, we see this not only as a challenge but also as a great opportunity. Precisely because they come with unique perspectives, different experiences, and this further creates an environment of inclusion, which occurs naturally and brings a lot of added value to our company.” Alina Amza started off with some background.

 

Watch Alina Amza’s speech at BR’s Inspiring Voices #EqualFuture conference


Openness, flexibility, mentoring and social activities

“Some of the initiatives that we have implemented in order to create an enabling environment for our people to grow, to feel comfortable with us, first of all we have talked a lot and we have been very close during this period with our colleagues in leadership, we have always encouraged a very honest and very open dialogue between colleagues and their managers. We introduced Open Paid Annual Leave, OPAL as we call it, which offers a lot of flexibility to people with different needs, from different countries. We have made sure that we implement a buddy system especially in the area of the onboarding process, but not only that, because it goes further into the mentoring area. Of course, we have been very close to colleagues listening to their needs and organising all kinds of social activities so that they get to know each other and develop this sense of belonging. As I said earlier, there are many challenges, but we like to see them as opportunities, especially in this extremely dynamic environment.” The Superbet Group Wellbeing & Inclusion Director explained her company’s initiatives.

 

Listening, raising awareness, engaging and taking action, the 4 pillars of Superbet’s wellbeing strategy

“Now, more than ever, there is a need for a culture of care for company employees. Our wellbeing strategy is based on 4 homogeneous pillars that we consider the most important: Listen, Draw Attention, Engage, and Action.

Listening, is our way of making sure we understand our employees’ needs. And how do we do that? The approaches are classic to the HR world, whether we use engagement surveys, focus groups, qualitative feedback, and even spontaneous feedback or informal discussions, we want very much to engage the voice of our people because it tells us most quickly and accurately what their needs are. There is another very important thing under this pillar, that we are connected to what is going on in the market, to best practices and new research, because these things give us more visibility on what is happening at the macro level.

Draw Attention, or the Awareness Pillar, is our commitment to destigmatizing mental health issues. We struggle intensely with this stigma and are very committed to this pillar and reiterating the benefits that this personal resilience brings.

The Engagement and Action pillars are very much linked to the area of inclusion and belonging so they are the next steps in our people taking ownership of their own wellbeing. We see it as a shared responsibility between people and the organisation. If the first steps come from us, so that we provide the framework in terms of direction, the next step has to come from the people themselves in a proactive, assertive way, so that they focus on the wellbeing area.” Says Alina Amza.

 

 

A multidimensional strategy

“We look at people’s wellbeing from all directions. And one of the first steps we are taking in this direction, we have just designed a 3-month program in which we will work with our partners at Atlas, a program that includes 30 workshops, both in Romanian and English, divided into 3 main clusters: Mind, Body, and Soul. In September, we will tackle topics such as depression, anxiety, panic attacks, work-life balance, even topics related to burnout. In October we will focus on what the body means, i.e. mindful eating, insomnia, healthy behaviours that people can address so that they feel good in their own body. And in the last month of this triad, November, we will focus on Soul and talk a lot about the relationships we have in general, both with the community and with our partners and children.” Alina Amza contiunes.

 

In a very disruptive 2020, Superbet has worked on the framework for the Open Paid Annual Leave (OPAL), which was eventually implemented in January 2021.

“The philosophy is simple, anyone can take as much leave as they want, as long as they deliver their job specific responsibilities on time. People were slightly reluctant at first, but we also had a lot of sessions and workshops to answer all their questions, even the less comfortable ones. Beyond the benefits associated with these wellbeing programs, which are classic, whether we are talking about talent acquisition & retention, work-life balance, increased productivity, we believe that the best thing that comes out of this initiative is that our people bring their best selves to work. OPAL is based on how our people manage their energy and not their time, because Superbet as an organization is very focused on performance and impact, and not on presenteeism.” Amza explains.

“As far as the Superbet mothers are concerned, we realize and are aware that they need a lot of flexibility and we took their feedback into account, we realized that both OPAL and this flexible working environment were two aspects that helped them to face these challenges, both personally and professionally. From this point of view there was very good feedback from our colleagues. Of course, this is a pilot year we expect there will be more questions and improvements, but so far the data shows that it is a positive trend.” Concluded Alina Amza.

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