Kindred’s long-term success is driven by our people. Attracting and retaining the best people to support and drive Kindred’s long-term strategic objectives, purpose and business operations, remains a key priority. A key part of this is to offer a best-in-class employee experience. We do so in a number of ways, not the least by investing in the training and development of our employees, creating an inclusive workspace and offering highly competitive benefits.
Target
Increase the proportion of senior leadership positions held by women to 50 per cent, by 2025.
Empowering the people at Kindred
In 2022, we updated our people strategy. It now focuses on six key areas: securing employees, developing employees, creating an inclusive workplace, refining Kindred’s operating model, providing an outstanding employee experience, and ensuring effective and efficient employee costs.
Attracting the best talents
To achieve long-term success, we are constantly recruiting new talents. We do so by offering a diverse and stimulating work environment, where people get the chance to work with top-of-the line technology and have room to develop and propel their own development by embracing new perspectives and drawing on a culture of learning.
In 2022, we recruited 636 people throughout the organization. Targets for 2023 include reducing time to hire by 20 per cent and achieving an attrition target across the Group of 17 per cent, thus allowing us to keep our employees for a longer period. By the end of 2023, we will be opening a tech hub in Bangalore, with the aim of achieving a team of 100 when fully staffed. The hub will bring additional capacity to the Group’s tech function, with teams working with European, North American and Australian colleagues.
Creating an inclusive workplace
At Kindred, we want our workplace to be characterized by diversity and inclusiveness, offering an attractive workplace for people from a wide range of backgrounds, cultures and experiences. We promote equal opportunities across the employee life-cycle, regardless of gender, ability, race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation or age. Our diverse workforce is a key success factor that enhances the quality of decision-making and business performance.
We are constantly looking to get better, recognising that an inclusive culture builds on more than mere words on a paper. In the UK, we use Self ID, a diversity data gathering and monitoring initiative, which allows us to benchmark our DEI data against other organisations. Through this voluntary process we can develop practices and policies to enhance the employee experience globally. We intend to introduce Self ID to our other locations, where permitted by law, in 2023.
Gender equality
We are committed to working towards gender equality both within Kindred and in the communities in which we operate. Our long-term goal is to achieve a 50:50 gender split in senior management, and we aim for 50:50 gender shortlists for any vacancies in the top four management tiers during 2023. We expect that our work to develop an internal pipeline of female leaders will begin to take effect, thus getting us closer to our target. To support our communities in achieving gender equality we engage in initiatives such as Women in Racing and Women in Tech Sweden.
A culture of learning
Our strength is in our people. We foster a learning and coaching culture by investing in employee development from day one. We have a strong internal network to deliver facilitator‑led and peer-to-peer development opportunities. By investing in the development of our people, we ensure that we are building a team that will challenge the status quo and that will identify new and better ways of working.
When it comes to learning, being a global company is truly a strength. As we are operating a diverse range of products, across multiple markets and with employees based in a number of offices across the world, we get access to a vast array of perspectives, allowing employees to share knowledge and best practice across departments and country borders.
Our skills development program “Kindred Academy” serve as a platform for continuous learning, giving our people the opportunity to make new strides in their personal and professional development. Specifically, the “Kindred Academy” provides employees with the opportunity to acquire new in-depth skills, expertise and knowledge, as well as expand their internal and external network. On top of individual training and development, Kindred requires all employees to complete regular mandatory training on information security, anti‑money laundering, responsible gambling, the General Data Protection Regulation, health and safety, as well as anti-bribery and anti-corruption refresher courses.
