Foster the people: How operators are cultivating the right company culture

Words by Gerard Starkey

The egaming industry never sleeps. Open for business 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, operators and suppliers are required to work around the clock to ensure end users can place bets, spin roulette wheels or play hands whenever they so desire.

While advancements in technology have enabled greater levels of automation, there remains a fundamental human role at play. It’s perhaps an obvious point to make but it’s people who build the algorithms, trading models and complex bonusing systems. It’s people who are needed to iterate and innovate around product. It’s people who make strategic decisions that can make or break organisations.

Credit: Getty Images

So when businesses boast about their quality of products, it’s worth bearing in mind the brains and talent that lay beneath – the foundation upon which every company is built. As GVC chief exec Kenny Alexander tells EGR Intel: “One thing about the gaming industry that is often underestimated is the importance of good people.”

That, in essence, is what operators require if they are to succeed long-term – good people. Talented people. A group of motivated and collegiate staffers working for a common cause. And as Mr Green CEO Per Norman notes, a good collection of workers are required before you can hope to accumulate good customers and build a sustainable business.

“I think it starts with good employees because it is them that set the tonality in customer services or marketing campaigns – that’s where you get the good customers,” Norman says. “The other way around, if you had good customers but not good employees you would have a problem, so everything starts with good employees.”

Of course, it’s possible to enjoy some success without that base of motivated employees, but that success is likely to be harder to come by and not offer much in the way of longevity. “If you have great tech, good partners and some good marketers you might get away without having a super engaged workforce,” Sky Betting & Gaming (SB&G) brand and HR director Rob Painter says. “But you wouldn’t be as successful as if you did have an engaged workforce,” he adds.

Culture club

One method of getting and keeping staff engaged in the business is by instilling a company-wide culture – a way of working and behaving which promotes interaction, collaboration and the freedom of expression and creativity. And this is very much the route taken by SB&G, which prides itself on the collaboration that takes place among its teams – or ‘tribes’, as it terms them.

According to Painter, this cooperative approach to working is the operator’s “point of difference”. “SB&G operates a tribal way of working whereby you have product, marketing, technology, finance and others working together on projects – there are no siloed departments,” he says.

“One thing about the gaming industry often underestimated is the importance of good people” – Kenny Alexander, GVC

“It’s collaborative so, for instance, when you are discussing innovations to cash-out, you’ll receive everyone’s perspective; finance, marketing, tech – they are all working together and that sense of collaboration is distinctive.” Painter adds that this way of working not only leads to a better overall result but improves staff morale, with tribe members feeling involved with the development of products from the embryonic stage.

SB&G has been going through something of a transition – if not, transformation – over the past couple of years. Ever since Sky sold an 80% stake in the business to private equity firm CVC Capital Partners in 2015, SB&G has built itself into an independent company, rather than one reliant on the central shared services of Sky.

However, according to Painter, this process has enabled SB&G to structure the business in a way that better reflects its culture, rather than the one associated with its previous parent company. “SB&G already had its distinctive culture from Sky as we were 200 miles away in Leeds,” Painter says. “We weren’t just a copy and paste from Sky and, if anything, the change allowed us to drive more of our culture into the business.

“Everything we did from bonus schemes to the systems we used for booking holidays – everything was from Sky so we had the opportunity when we went independent to re-write those things and make them culturally fit better with SB&G. So, if anything, the transition away from Sky enabled us to speed up the business and further embed our unique culture,” he adds.

Growing pains

Painter tells EGR Intel that one of SB&G’s main challenges has been to maintain its culture as it continues to grow. The firm has mushroomed from a headcount of 600 in 2015 to approximately 1,200 today. Meanwhile, the launch of small offices in Italy and Germany and a new tech and international-focused hub in Sheffield means keeping that one firm feel has been far from straightforward.

“We fully admit one of our biggest challenges is retaining our culture at scale – digesting 600 people into the business is no easy task,” Painter says. To help do so the firm has designed all office buildings in a similar fashion, with an emphasis on open and collaborative work spaces. The firm has also built its own HR and employee on-boarding systems – as well all other back-office functions previously provided by Sky.

However, while SB&G has, so far, taken the more methodical, organic route to growth, others have taken a shortcut through mergers and acquisitions. In the past 18 months alone we have seen three mega mergers with the creation of Paddy Power Betfair, the enlarged GVC Holdings through its bwin.party acquisition, and Ladbrokes Coral.

Sky Bet’s Rob Painter says one of the operator’s biggest challenges is retaining its culture at scale

But it is perhaps that final merger of the three which threw up the most interesting and direct clash of cultures, with people from the legacy rival firms brought together – with the large majority of UK staff to soon be under one roof. As Ladbrokes Coral director of communications Donal McCabe tells EGR Intel, Ladbrokes CEO (and now Lads Coral chief exec) Jim Mullen was clear that Ladbrokes was to compete hard with Coral right up until the completion of the merger.

“Until we merge with them I want their [Coral’s] breakfast, lunch and dinner,” McCabe recalls Mullen saying ahead of the November 2016 completion date. Which makes you think how difficult it must be to bring two sets of long-running rival staff together – particularly traders who are known to have a particularly competitive mind-set. However, according to McCabe, the Ladbrokes Coral strategy has been to let things take their natural course.

“People talk a lot about creating a new culture but I think it’s a mistake to say from day one things will be different or set in a particular way,” he says.

“Cultures evolve, they don’t get imposed. What you have to do is sort out the housekeeping – get people in the locations and teams they are going to be in and get teams working together. Only then will a culture emerge, but it takes time,” he adds.

Redundancy worries

One issue thrown up by industry consolidation is job security, with staffers concerned for their futures. In the run-up to the Lads Coral merger, Mullen regularly praised his staff for keeping their minds fixed on the day job under the gathering clouds of uncertainty. And McCabe says the firm made a real effort to ensure its people were kept up to date on their positions.

“When you go through such change, it’s important to keep people up to speed with everything that’s going on and do that as quickly as you can,” McCabe says. “I’m not saying we got this perfectly right, but we tried to let people know where they stood and what could happen to them. It’s something you just have to be upfront about, although sometimes there is nothing to say – an update may be that there is no update.”

Kindred Group is another firm which has employed an acquisitive strategy in recent years, more recently through the addition of 32Red. And Kindred head of talent acquisition Liam Reese tells EGR Intel the firm tries to be quick to inform staff their positions are safe and bring them up to speed with the ethos of the larger group.

Kindred’s Liam Reese: “We are careful to hire people that match our values”

“Acquisitions will almost always mean change and to a certain extent redundancies,” Reese explains. “With iGame and Stan James this was no exception, although we bought them with the clear intention to grow both businesses and have managed to keep most of the teams onboard. The primary focus was on making sure the incoming staff were engaged in the larger business and the mission we are on – that’s the key thing for us,” he adds.

However, it’s not just around mergers where transparency pays. According to Painter, being open about company strategy and goals as a general rule will help staff at all levels feel part of the business and therefore more engaged and motivated than they may otherwise have been.

“We have a culture of bringing people together,” Painter says. “In Leeds there is a roulette wheel space which is used for town halls, company meetings and for the CEO or heads of product to talk to staff about a variety of things. It’s very much part of our culture to gather together to share and debate and we replicate in our other buildings too.”

Reese also explains how Kindred took the opportunity to strengthen its company culture following last year’s corporate rebrand from Unibet. “In April we took the entire company to Rome for three days to focus on becoming Kindred,” he says. “The rebrand was a big project so we felt we had to explain what Kindred means – emphasise the values and company strategy so that everyone understands what that journey is – it’s important to be as open as we can.”

“People talk a lot about creating a new culture but I think it’s a mistake to say from day one things will be different” – Donal McCabe, Ladbrokes Coral

Recruitment and retention

Getting the right people through the door and into the business begins with the hiring process and that means being clear about business values at the earliest of stages. This is exactly what Kindred tries to impress on interviewees to ensure new
starters complement its existing workforce and are in tune with its culture.

Reese says not only does this approach help them filter out those they feel aren’t suited to the business, but it also enables people to remove themselves from the process. “We’ve got a very strong culture here at Kindred,” Reese says. “So we are careful to hire people that match our values so at the hiring process our values are made clear.” He reveals the firm has a number of core values, listing ‘individuals united’ and ‘believe in friendship’ as just two. “And that’s a reason why we have been so successful,” he adds.

And in an industry where finding the right staff has never been more difficult, and where competition for talent has never been so fierce, being able to retain and motivate what you do have has arguably never been more important.

This is something SB&G places a great emphasis on with the operator setting aside time each week to ensure all staffers are fixed on their career development and education within the business. Although SB&G doesn’t have the same staff poaching pressures as companies based in Gibraltar and Malta may, the arrival of Superbet to the Leeds region as well as the opening of a bet365 office in nearby Manchester means it’s an area the firm can ill afford to take its eye off.

One of SB&G’s latest recruits, head of technology David Andrade, recently told a conference audience about the lengths the operator goes to in this regard. “I’ve never worked in a leadership team that puts so much effort towards making sure their people are developing and enjoying their job,” Andrade said.

“We moved away from the traditional HR objective setting and rewarding type of things, instead we have continuous feedback with regular one-to-ones, making sure each individual has their own development plan towards their career. This is a fast-paced environment and people can get very tired, so having the time and space to do these things can be difficult. On Friday afternoons we have learning and development time. No one is supposed to do actual work, instead you’re supposed to be working on your own personal development.

“‘Our people are our number one priority’ – these are the words our CTO Andy Burton said to me not long after I joined and the reality is that every time we talk and discuss something strategic we want to do, our people are our main priority,” he added.

Sky Betting & Gaming’s Leeds tech hub brings together teams to work on projects

And Betsson CMO Marion Gamel’s approach to avoiding staff attrition appears to chime with SB&G’s. She says operators that believe in novelty items, such as the installation of a table tennis table, or free ice creams on Fridays, are approaching the issue from the wrong angle. While these perks will no doubt be welcomed by staff, they are by no means the reason why people remain with a company.

Or as Gamel wrote it in a recent blog post: “Benefits are lipstick on a pig. They don’t fool anyone long term. I think when it comes to attrition management, we’ve completely lost sight of what really matters: people and their motivations.” In the post she argued that the reason people decide to leave is based on emotions, with fact-based thinking just “an afterthought”.

Therefore it is important for employers to build a deeper relationship and connection with their employees. Simply put, Gamel believes employers must offer employees ‘hope’. “This is the ONLY valid reason why people stick around, at work and in a relationship,” she said. “Call it belief in a better future, enthusiasm, positive outlook… you get my meaning. I will call it ‘hope’ for the sake of simplicity.”

Task ahead

Kindred’s Reese describes hiring and retaining top talent as one of the industry’s greatest challenges. He believes that the more changeable the industry – as the egaming industry continues to be – the greater the price operators place on skills. One specific issue he raises is hiring from outside of the industry – the ability to bring in people that can view things through a fresh pair of eyes.

“Gambling is a turn-off for some people compared with some other industries, and naturally that makes the talent pool a little bit smaller,” Reese says. “And there’s a huge benefit to having a diverse workforce – that means more than just nationality and gender, it means people who can look at things from a different perspective,” he adds.

This is an area where SB&G has had some success. According to Painter, the firm has been able to hire, in the main, people from outside the industry. While its location, away from its rivals, will play a part in this, the firm has tried to sell itself as a technology and entertainment- driven business rather than a pure gambling company.

“The tech challenges are a really fascinating one if you are a software engineer,” Painter says. “The scale and complexity of the tech challenges, the speed that’s required to provide markets to thousands of customers on a Saturday – if you talk to someone working in tech, those kind of challenges are quite exciting.”

However, Painter says the firm, and the wider industry, has more to do if it is to make its workforce reflective of society. The issue is that sport and technology tend to appeal more to men than women, with technology and science-based university courses dominated by males.

“The industry as a whole is suffering from a lack of diversity,” he says. “It’s an area we are going to be looking to tackle more over the next few years. We believe our culture will help us in that –we’re not a traditional bookmaker. Without doubt it’s challenging and we’ve done a lot in the last couple of years to promote the business and we’ll be doing more.”

So as the industry continues to mature, so too does its approach to staff. No longer is fostering the right culture and instilling motivating company values the responsibility of HR teams alone. If they didn’t already, execs are understanding the importance of an engaged workforce and realising the need to offer more than just a competitive salary.

But people being people means there is no one silver bullet. “The truth is you will be sold lots of solutions to these problems but there is nothing you can buy off the shelf,” McCabe says. Job satisfaction certainly involves a number of different factors, but the more boxes you are able to tick, the more chance your business will enjoy long-term success.