People partner in our holding company is a person who helps the business to effectively manage talent and at the same time works to ensure that all team members feel supported in their development, motivation and career growth. As well as performing at their best.

I want to start with a bit of backstory. Four years ago I joined PIN-UP Global 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 3600 employees and offices in seven countries. There are 41 people partners in the people management department. We will talk further about how to organize the work of these specialists in the business in order to maximize their impact.

The industry itself dictates the rules

The function of people partner in our holding is dictated by the needs of our business and peculiarities of the iGaming industry, which is very dynamic and rapidly growing. This gives specialists an opportunity to move rapidly up the career ladder and try themselves in new roles, including managerial ones. Accordingly, 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 probationary period, together with the manager to set goals for the employee after the performance review.

Functions of people partner in PIN-UP Global

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 on their own. And the number of issues they solve is one of the key indicators of their effectiveness.

Next, I will describe the portrait of a people partner in PIN-UP Global. For us, it is a specialist who participates in making management decisions on a par with a manager, helps in managing people on the basis of practical cases in real time, is a full-fledged participant in strategic planning and assessment of team resources. He provides reports, attends team work meetings and gives his assessment, may participate in final interviews of candidates and generally supervises managers regarding the quality of HR processes implementation. For example, my people partner gives me advice suggesting improvements in the work with the team, provides feedback after important meetings. Also our specialists help the manager in creating a portrait of a candidate within the framework of recruiting, in assessing an employee and his potential, have to warn the manager that one of the team members is burning out and it is necessary to send a person on vacation.

Our people partners are people who help manage teams effectively.

People who help manage teams effectively

On the other hand, they are partners who help each specialist to be as efficient as possible and show the best results. After all, one of the tasks of a people partner is to ensure maximum productivity of each team member. For this purpose, he meets with employees at individual meetings, gives correct feedback on his work, prompts managers what can be changed so that the result of work would be higher.

How people partners work

The key competencies of people partners in our holding are managerial skills and knowledge of psychology, which allows us to interact effectively with the team, managers and form a successful management culture.

From the holding company’s side we provide training, which is necessary for successful work of a specialist in this position: a skills course “Fundamentals of Management and Communication Management”, a specialized course in business English. We also have monthly HR Catch-Up meetings for sharing experience between people partners of all teams, where we consider different practical cases and problematic issues and discuss the most appropriate options for solving these or those tasks.

Of course, with the development of the people management department, the tools that are used in our work have also developed. Since one people partner on average works with a team of 70 to 120 people, all routine tasks should be automated as much as possible. People partners work with customized Jira and Confluence, as well as with their own social gamified platform - PIN-UP.Team. This is a development of PIN-UP on the basis of which a Learning Management System with our own training courses is implemented. This platform also allows employees to quickly get the necessary information and be part of the corporate culture.

I would also like to add that this month we are launching our own chat bot based on artificial intelligence, which will answer employees’ questions.

To summarize, I can say that it is obviously impossible to say that the way the people partner function is built in PIN-UP Global is the only right option. Every business has its own pains and needs. But as Lee Iacocca wrote: “I do not insist that you follow my example. But if you don’t follow it, you will have to invent some other system that is just as effective.” Our system is effective. And we have proven it in practice.

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