SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
In the competitive world of sports betting and igaming businesses with significant growth ambitions need to develop highly-effective hiring and staff retention strategies. To find out how one of the market leaders tackles that challenge, SBC News spoke to Stella Voulgaraki, Chief People Officer of Betano’s parent company Kaizen Gaming.
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How have you found working for a company in the igaming industry?
What I find particularly interesting is our customer centric approach, as it shapes and influences our entire organisation’s culture. It’s not just about how we engage with clients, but also about how we interact with one another within the company.
For example, our marketing department runs numerous campaigns to connect with customers, keeping them engaged and fostering brand loyalty. Similarly, in internal communications, we run campaigns aimed at engaging our people and we organise programs and activations to boost employee satisfaction and improve retention rates.
Customer lens is one of Kaizen Gaming’s core values. It’s about stepping into other people’s shoes, understanding their needs and desires, and taking action to create value for them. If you think about it, this approach shouldn’t apply to customer relations only. It should extend to all our day-to-day interactions.
When it comes to recruiting, obviously, you guys have done a lot of it. How do you tell people ‘this is why you should come and work for us’?
Employee wellbeing is a priority for us. The Kaizen Campus is the first building in Greece with a WELL certification showing our commitment to the health and well-being of our people. Apart from the building itself, we have set in place our own well-being program, ‘Better You’, which promotes health and safety, physical and mental wellbeing, and inclusion. Indicative initiatives include access to a nutritionist, a psychological support hotline, first aid sessions, and inclusivity seminars.
Diversity and inclusion are integral to our agenda. With 2,700+ employees from 42 nationalities operating across 17 countries, this is a vital part of who we are. We embrace our people’s differences and we empower them to bring their full selves to work.
As a fast-growing company, we offer ample career growth opportunities. In 2024 alone, we have promoted over 500 employees and continue to hire more than 1,000 annually. Learning and development are also key; we have established a leadership academy for managers, provide scholarships for postgraduate students, and offer access to a wide range of online courses.
You’re a cutting edge firm going global. What do the latest generation of employees want? How do you tend to their needs as well as the company’s own?
The average age at Kaizen Gaming is 33. Four generations are represented within the company and it’s essential to adapt our policies, events, and overall approach to meet their needs.
Yet, millennials are the biggest part of our company. And what do they want? They want more flexibility, work-life balance and connection to the company’s purpose. I believe this is one of the reasons they are joining Kaizen Gaming, because our values are part of our reality, shaping our recruitment and performance management processes.
The younger generation values less formal communication and more authentic relationships. This is something that Kaizen Gaming offers. It isn’t the structured, typical work environment that other big companies have. We have maintained the startup logic in the way we communicate and connect with each other. And there are a lot of events, a lot of parties, a lot of opportunities to collaborate and be together; different small things that make you feel connected.
It must be quite tricky for you to establish values that everyone agrees on.
Establishing shared values in a fast-growing company can be challenging, but we prioritise feedback to foster alignment and drive shared understanding. Through engagement surveys during recruitment, onboarding, and performance reviews which take place twice a year, we gather insights into employee experiences.
Our 360° feedback process helps us understand their needs and address them swiftly. Conducting engagement surveys three times a year allows us to stay on top of changes, mitigate risks, and instill best practices, while making changes where needed.
And are people happy to answer these surveys?
Our average participation rate is approximately 90%. Our approach is to share the results of the surveys with our people and show them that we take initiatives to improve on matters they have pointed out.
In business, generally, people may not enjoy participating in such surveys when they feel that their feedback is ignored. We try to make people feel that their voice is heard. We acknowledge that we can’t get everything right, but seeking feedback and acting on it are central to our culture and efforts to continuously improve.
How does the public perception of the gambling industry, and the fact some people really don’t like it, affect recruitment?
We are actually hiring approximately 1,000 people per year, with many more people applying for our open positions. Most candidates view us as a rapidly growing company, through which they can pursue their personal growth. To many candidates we are particularly attractive due to our strong connection to the world of sports.
Do the CSR initiatives you undertake help the perception of the industry?
We undertake a lot of CSR initiatives in partnership with our Betano-sponsored clubs. Such initiatives include raising awareness on important issues, such as early breast cancer detection, improving hospital treatment conditions, and promoting social inclusion through sports.
An excellent example of the latter has been INZONE, a sensory room we created at Dragão Stadium in partnership with FC Porto and the School of Health of the Polytechnic Institute of Porto, to make the stadium more accessible for fans with sensory challenges.
This year, we launched the Kaizen Foundation, funded exclusively by Kaizen Gaming, to further enhance our social responsibility efforts. So far, key projects include completing the renovation of a critical section of the Pitesti Paediatric Hospital in Romania and commencing the extensive renovation of Penteli Children’s General Hospital in Athens, Greece, with a total investment exceeding €4 million.
Through such initiatives, I believe people recognise that we are a socially responsible company and that makes us an attractive employer too.
You obviously have your HQ in Greece. Do you have many offices everywhere else, or do people work remotely?
We have over 1,300 people in our HQ in Athens, but we also have many offices worldwide. Our second largest office is in Lisbon, Portugal, with over 400 team members. We have an office with over 150 people in São Paulo, Brazil, and we also have offices in Romania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Malta, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, Canada and Nigeria.
What’s the work model and how did you get to it?
We follow a hybrid work model, which splits between three days in the office and two days from home. We want people to connect with each other and with our brand, so we want them to be present at the office, collaborate in person and enjoy time together, but at the same time provide them with the flexibility and work-life balance they seek.
However, policies vary by department and role. For the Tech and Product teams the policy is one day in the office and four remote. Tech people can work for a company in the United States, UK, Germany, or anywhere else. They are more used to fully-remote contracts. To remain an attractive employer in this global market you need to follow the trend, which in this case is less time in the office. On the other hand, managers are in the office five days a week, as they play a critical role in team cohesion.
Post-COVID, many employees feel disconnected from their companies, which increases the likelihood of moving elsewhere. Managing turnover is a priority for us and despite our size, we maintain it relatively low.
You have a bunch of ‘Great Place to Work’ certificates. What was the process for earning those?
The ‘Great Place to Work’ certifications and ‘Best Workplace’ awards are based on the anonymous answers of our own people and evaluation conducted by the Great Place to Work organisation. These certifications give you confidence that what you’re doing is right and also hold value for potential employees, as they validate the authenticity of our culture and our positive environment. Recently we were announced as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work for in Europe for the third time.
How do you encourage diversity when it comes to recruitment?
We will not choose someone just because we want to increase the quota. What we do is that we make our services more accessible to different types of candidates. We want to recruit different nationalities, we want to have more women, but we are trying to be an organisation that walks the talk and supports diversity through our policies, not just through hiring.
I think what we are doing is fairer. It is called equity. You need to create and provide similar opportunities for people to have access to the same growth or position.
You have 2,700 people and you’re recruiting a thousand every year? What’s the mid-term plan, three to five years? How big do you see yourselves becoming?
We aim to operate in 26 countries by 2026. Today, we operate in 18 countries. Accordingly, this plan will lead to an increase in headcount, but it really depends on how big each market will be for us.
