Kevin, your CV states that you've worked for four companies in five countries: the US, Spain, the UK, Australia, and now Malta. What can you say about each country and how they compare in terms of business practices?

Yes, culturally the people are different, and it's very important to recognise and respect both cultural and mindset differences when building teams. These differences make the teams unique and stronger.

Having gained experience across many borders, I have become sensitive to recognising these differences and to placing importance on respecting them.

I think it's important as here at Tipico, for example, we're building a company of people with like minds that bring the passion and the skills with them to help us achieve our business goals. All these things need to align. As we're bringing new people on board not only are we looking at their functional or technical capabilities, but also their cultural fit.

Our culture is centred on the values that we have set up as a company, the values that we live on a daily basis. These values determine how we work together, what we expect from our peers, and how we make decisions. All these are the cultural components of who we are: the DNA of the company, in a way.

What are your main responsibilities on an average day?

Oh, my average day is a bit all over the place! I interact with people, from the most senior to newest recruits. The topics we discuss would range from things like assessing the skills that a manager might need to help him build up his or her team, to compensation issues, to budget issues regarding headcount growth.

Today, my work included developing bespoke training courses for our people managers, the leaders within the organisation. Tomorrow it could be a contractual discussion, or hiring a new executive or director to the company.

You need some wide-ranging talents and skills to be able to handle all this...

Absolutely! I've done a lot of different things, in other words, a 'jack of all trades' in the HR field.

I have had the fortune to build up my competencies in hiring compensation, benefits, employer branding, events planning, engagement, offices services, talent management, career management, performance management, payroll, communication, management of change, culture, and the list goes on.

This wide range of experience helps me make decisions on how to invest or conduct process improvements in HR. The starting point is always the business need and value that HR can deliver.

Having a wide range of HR experience ensures we arrive at the best decision. It is fundamental to link everything we do in the HR function back to business in its origin.

What have been your biggest achievements at Tipico so far?

The first of my three biggest achievements I'd say would be helping the company to establish our own mission-vision values. The second achievement would be the recruiting model and how we recruit employees and bring them on board, and the third would be the employer branding.

We've emphasised heavily the need to brand ourselves as the top employer on the island. Talent management is another success I'm working on: once we've attracted the talent, how we retain it and keep it as fully engaged as possible.

To the outsider, it's not immediately apparent that Tipico is such a big organisation with all kinds of jobs in all kinds of different departments...

That's very true, we offer career opportunities in many functions including marketing, bookmaking, product management, software development, legal, finance, IT, HR, customer operation, business intelligence, business analysis, casino and retail. As a company, Tipico focuses on investing in its people.

This does not just mean training, it means having outstanding offices, providing a good atmosphere and offering career opportunities. I believe we are top-notch employers and one of the things I would like to do is continue to develop the offerings that we have for employees, to ensure that we get recognised as being the best place to work.

Do many opportunities for advancement exist within the company?

Yes, as a matter of fact we've recently seen a surge in internal promotions. Now that the company is a certain size we can promote from within. We have new roles constantly opening up. We always advertise our roles internally as well as externally to ensure that we get the best candidate for the job and when possible we do promote from within. 

This shows that we're serious about bringing talent on board, keeping the talent, motivating it and facilitating career progression within Tipico.

What kind of qualities do employees need to bring to the job?

Key qualities of Tipico employees are motivation, passion, drive, and a will to be part of the success of Tipico.  

We're not looking for people with static minds, we're looking for people who are very flexible and people who are a step ahead. I want to be ahead of the competition and bring on people that can help us achieve that goal.

In order to be ahead you need to bring people on board who have the mindset to drive to that innovation, to drive to transforming where we are today into something that establishes us as an even stronger market leader in the future. The mindset of getting ahead of the competition starts with us bringing the right people on board.

Recently, Tipico has been collaborating with a number of organisations. Is this part of your employer branding strategy?

Yes we've partnered with KSU, the University students' council, including sponsoring the student common room, and there's also been participation and sponsorship of career fairs. At the career fairs we've had our employees speak with the students to give potential candidates a good feel for what Tipico is all about. Our employees talk about what it's like to work with a gaming company, and how high the level of professionalism in the company really is. These are the things that we want to showcase. 

This approach is intended to get future candidates to think:  "hey I want to work for Tipico because they're a great place to be, they're the company everyone is talking about, and they're very selective in who works for them".

Do you feel there is now more awareness to what Tipico is all about?

I think we hit the nail on the head when it came to our employer branding strategy. We coupled employer branding with the change in our recruiting model and we have seen the size as well as the quality of our candidate pool increase. I cannot tell you how many times I've been told "I've seen your advertisement in that publication," or "what Tipico's doing is really pushing the bar in Malta on employer branding".

Probably, for me, one of the most flattering experiences or examples of whether or not our employer branding strategy is successful is to see how other companies are copying what we're doing, and that means we're doing something right. That doesn't mean that we can sit and rest, we need to continue to push into new ways of getting the brand out there. When others recognise your work, you know that you've done a good job, and that's a really good feeling.