Oksana Izmailova: “At PIN-UP Global, the function of people partner is to help businesses grow and develop”

Oksana Izmailova, Chief Human Resources Director at PIN-UP Global, talks about how to build a people partner function in a company to help the business to scale up.

Tell us about the people partner function in PIN-UP Global. What is the main goal and task of these specialists in your holding?

The function of people partner in our holding is dictated by the needs of our business and the peculiarities of the iGaming industry. On the one hand, our people partners are people who help managers to manage teams effectively. And on the other hand, they are partners who help each specialist to be as efficient as possible and show the best results. Globally, the function of people partner is to help businesses to develop and scale qualitatively and quickly.

You said that the functionality is dictated by the industry. Could you explain in more detail what you mean by that?

The iGaming industry is very dynamic and rapidly growing. This gives specialists the opportunity to move rapidly up the career ladder and try themselves in new roles, including managerial ones. Consequently, young managers often have no experience in managing teams. And at this point, people partners become their partners and business coaches, whose advice compensates for the lack of experience at first.

What skills should a specialist have for the position of people partner in PIN-UP Global?

Firstly, it is a person who is able to solve cases and extra-cases independently. One of the main tasks of a people partner is to understand what is going wrong in a certain process and find a solution to fix it. We teach our people partners to solve problems independently. And the number of issues they solve is one of the key indicators of their effectiveness

This person is active, proactive, and takes part in most HR projects that are currently taking place in our business. This specialist has a very high level of understanding of the area and processes his team is working on. It is also important for us that people partner knows and applies general knowledge of psychology and management. After all, they help our managers in their everyday management cases and work.

Could you tell us in detail how people partners work in PIN-UP Global and what is included in their functionality? In what issues do these specialists help the heads of business areas?

Firstly, people partners participate in management decisions on an equal footing with the manager, assist in managing people on the basis of practical cases in real time, and are a full-fledged participant in strategic planning and assessment of team resources. Together with the manager, they analyze team performance, review overtime reports, plan new hires, schedule vacations, and more. People partner holds meetings with all team members, consolidates all the information received and comes to the manager with certain recommendations aimed at improving the internal climate and management processes.

Our people partners can also take part in final interviews. They understand what portrait of an employee is optimal, what features this or that team has, what people this manager will work with, and what people may have difficulties. That's why we always recommend to the recruiting team, when they just start working with a vacancy, to invite to the meeting not only the manager, but also the people-partner, who can maximally detail the portrait of the candidate who is needed.

Also, the people-partner is the person who supervises the managers with respect to the implementation of the HR function. To give you an example, let me tell you a little bit about how I work with my people partner. It is very important for me that he does not keep silent, he gives advice. For example, he can advise to voice some information at a meeting or praise someone from the team, give feedback after negotiations. Every meeting I have with a people-partner is a meeting with a partner who supports me, who helps me work with my team.

What tools do people partners at PIN-UP Global work with?

We have a customized JIRA. We also have our own social platform, which we created from scratch - PIN-UP.TEAM. This is a development of PIN-UP, on the basis of which we implemented Learning Management System with our own training courses. This platform also allows employees to quickly get the necessary information and be part of the corporate culture.

We have also created and launched our own chatbot based on artificial intelligence, which will answer many questions that our employees ask our people-partners. For us, this is an opportunity to ensure the necessary speed of response, as well as to free up the time of the people-partner to deal with other level tasks.

How did you manage to build the people partner function as it exists today? What were the main challenges you faced and how did you solve them?

Four years ago I came to work at PIN-UP, and at that time the company had a narrow understanding of the HR function: the main efforts were focused on recruiting, and the people management function was rather blurred. People partners helped with any issues, but their work did not improve business processes. My goal was to turn the HR function into a tool that helps the business to scale.

Today we have 3800 employees in our holding company, and 41 people partners work in the people management department. And it was a long way to build an effective team of people partners. To begin with, we had to change the mindset of people partners. We taught our specialists to see the problem. It is difficult, but we managed to do it.

The second problem we had was that people partners should not be afraid to voice these problems. The third was that they saw the problem but did not solve it. So we had taboo words. For example, “highlighting.” We don't need to highlight anything. If there is a problem, you need to offer a solution. If you have already tried to solve this problem and it didn't work out, then come to me, we will think about how to do it together.

Therefore, in our evaluation of a people-partner's work, it is very important for us to know how many cases and extra-cases he can solve on his own. We realized that if a people-partner can solve 90% of cases on his own, without the involvement of a manager, we are ready to recognize them as having reached a senior level in their career.

(Photo by Taras Bezpalyi)