Through the lens of Singular's HR Business Partner: How HR helps in cultivating the company's outstanding culture

There are endless opportunities to learn from experience, to grow your knowledge through courses and trainings, or to get help and feedback from professionals in the team. All this leads to great growth and excitement at the same time, as it constantly gives you that sense of accomplishment – this is how Tamta Margania describes her favourite part of being a Senior HR Business Partner at Singular, an award-winning software company. She joined the team back in 2021 and later that year Singular was acquired by Flutter Entertainment, a leading sports betting, gaming, and entertainment provider operating some of the biggest brands in the industry.

For Tamta, this meant new professional opportunities not just for herself but for the whole HR team. When she started her job at Singular, they were a team of four. Now, the HR team consists of 13 people working hard to ensure the best HR, employee experience, and employer brand practices.

When I first decided to join the team, I was completely excited with the whole culture, professional opportunities, and the highly motivated and driven team. And now, as I look back, I am pleasantly surprised to find that my expectations were exceeded – says Tamta.

What's your favourite part of the job, and has it changed in any way since the company joined Flutter Entertainment?

Joining Flutter Entertainment was quite a big and exciting change. Our work processes became more dynamic, and my work scope became broader. I found myself in the center of multiple different projects and became a part of a work environment where you always need to do something new, to create, adapt, and implement. There are endless opportunities to learn from experience, to grow your knowledge through courses and trainings, or get help and feedback from professionals in the team. All this leads to great opportunities and excitement at the same time, as it constantly gives you that sense of accomplishment. You have the feeling that you are doing something meaningful for the team and that you have contributed to the creation and implementation of various HR systems that have a positive impact on the day-to-day processes and employee wellbeing.

How has being a part of Flutter Entertainment influenced Singular's HR practices?

First and foremost: we have become more global. Most HR processes are no longer limited to just within Singular, and employees are now part of a global people experience, including training, performance management, career development opportunities, and other benefits that come along with being a Flutter brand. This also led to the formation of a larger and stronger HR team with a broader strategic vision.

All major areas of HR were affected, including recruitment, benefits, policies, people systems, and processes. We had to learn how to navigate in a global environment and collaborate with different stakeholders in different projects. Looking back, it's easy to see that all the above helped a lot in aligning with Flutter, as well as in meeting our new colleagues from the Group, and adapting to the upgraded work culture. All this has positively affected the process of implementation of new systems and different integrations within our team.

How does Singular's company culture affect HR policies and procedures and vice versa – do you think that these two go hand in hand?

It is very important that company culture and HR policies are consistent and do not contradict each other. At the same time, when we work in acquiring Flutter policies, we typically go through numerous discussions and evaluating changes before deciding how to adapt the policies, our unique culture, the company needs, employee expectations, and current behaviour patterns. This is a critical part of tailoring policies to align with core values. For this reason, we also align internally within our HR team, specifically with our employee experience and employer branding teams.

What makes Singular a top employer of choice for job candidates or more precisely, what differentiates the company from the rest on the market?

For me personally, the best part of working at Singular is the constantly evolving environment, working with great teams, many global benefits, and various learning and development opportunities. The list of benefits of working at Singular and, of course, at Flutter Entertainment, is quite long and impressive. Our people work on award-winning software and cutting-edge technologies that significantly impact the work experience of each employee in our team and lead to ongoing professional development, as well as the opportunity to work alongside professionals from around the world.

Given how globally Flutter operates and how many offices the Group has around the world, being a part of our team also provides a great opportunity for networking, knowledge-sharing, and to experience different work cultures.

And last but not least, as a company that is focused on employee well-being, we offer employees a variety of benefits, such as supporting parents with fully paid maternity and paternity leaves, generous annual leave for the whole team, opportunity to work remotely from abroad for 20 days, and easily accessible well-being tools - including applications, webinars, and workshops covering mindfulness and wellbeing.

What is your DEI approach as HR Business Partner, how do you make sure the company embraces DEI while having growing teams across all offices?

We are committed to fostering a supportive and engaging culture where people are not only empowered to be their true selves, but also one that appreciates their unique contributions. We have offices in Georgia, North Macedonia, and Malta, and each has its own unique culture and that's one of the best things about being a part of an international team – you get to learn and celebrate different cultures.

In that sense, the HR team makes strong efforts to further promote diversity, equity and inclusion, and as a tech company, this also means focusing on improving the male-female ratio in our tech teams. We're proud to say that in our company, all employees are given the same benefits and opportunities for professional growth, and that our employee package is also tailored in a way that it suits everyone in the team, from working parents to adventurers, tech enthusiasts, and people who are carers.

We work hard to make a greater contribution to creating a diverse environment because this is an important part of an innovative culture, which in turn increases employee engagement and satisfaction. DEI is a large area, and we're thankful to be working with our colleagues at Flutter to acquire their years of accumulated experience to manage DEI processes effectively.

How do you think that company culture and HR in Singular will evolve in the upcoming years? What's next for your team?

Culture will become more global and inclusive; this is an inevitable part of development, especially now as a Flutter brand. The HR team will be no exception to this, as we're about to be more involved in projects on a global scale, and hopefully, we will have more opportunities to contribute to various HR projects and the wellbeing of our employees.

We are already involved in adapting and implementing important systems, such as the performance management and bonus systems. But our work doesn't stop here, so we're also on our way to start several new projects together with the Flutter team, which are related to our company culture, employee development, and DEI. They aim at improving the employee experience and give people even a bigger number of opportunities at work.

Singular is an international software company headquartered in Malta, with two development bases in Georgia and North Macedonia. The Singular team consists of 190+ people covering a variety of roles that contribute to the development of software solutions for sports betting and gaming, which quickly got international recognition and won prestigious industry awards. As of 2021, the company is part of Flutter Entertainment, the world leading sports betting, gaming, and entertainment provider for over 18 million customers worldwide.

For more information about Singular, its company culture and job opportunities, check out: https://careers.flutterinternational.com/our-brands/singular/