2022 Winner

Founded in 1993, Span has grown from a Croatia-based systems integrator to a global IT consultancy group serving customers around the world with a wide offering of cloud, security, and support services. Span is home to 750+ IT solution architects, consultants, support specialists, developers, business analysts, and researchers. We develop solutions for a rapidly evolving digital world and deliver technologies that transform businesses around the world.

Cross-functional collaboration is everyday life in Span. In our mission to deliver IT solutions through our expertise and experience that power up customers' businesses, it is crucial to assign a multidisciplinary team to shape and grind solutions from various points of view with a final product being just what customer needs at the time. As a company focused on life-long learning and development, cross-functional collaboration facilitates nurturing employees’ sense of personal responsibility. Management and HR encourage employees to take things into their own hands by exploring other positions, talking to experienced colleagues in the field, learning, taking exams to get certificates (never easier since we have our own testing center!) and to always advance, be it a vertical or a horizontal advancement. Lots of brainstorming meetings, quick status meetings, long lessons-learned meetings, amongst others, collaboration across organization lessons as one of the toughest, but most important and rewarding when mastered. We are not alone in this, we are digitally supported by our providers with tools like HR Cloud, MS Teams communication and collaboration platform, and our Yammer social network which ensures collaboration runs smoothly 24/7.

This is simple, we just listen to what people of Span tell us in our periodical organizational climate survey and during 1-on-1 meetings along with the Performance Evaluation reviews. One of the projects we are especially proud of is our Span TV. Due to the fast company growth, employees’ satisfaction with management communication started to decrease. To improve it, we came up with the idea of an internal communication channel with the potential of reaching a limitless number of employees at the same time – our very own (Span) TV. Span TV is our broadcasting station, and a way of keeping all our employees informed, entertained, and up to date.

The main actors and participants are the employees themselves with a regular board member strategy and future project plans live events. These are always backed up with anonymous Q&A sessions to answer all of our employees’ questions and cover all the topics we might’ve omitted. Furthermore, last year we started our internal education program called Span Management Academy. It’s a structured development course intended for employees who show a high level of knowledge, motivation, and commitment and want to continue to develop, both within the organization and outside their current specialization. One of the main tracks of our program is the People Skill track which is focused on the development of so-called soft skills such as personal development and the enablement of others, leadership skills, communication, teamwork, etc. Precisely this nine-month program enabled us to further strengthen leadership communication throughout the company.

As we all know COVID-19 pandemic opened the door to the possibility of remote and hybrid types of work. In Span, working from home has been retained as a form of work in all those departments where such work is possible and applicable. We like to adapt to the needs and wishes of our people, and everything depends on the teams and departments. Each department knows its people best within itself – some of them like to work from home while others prefer offices or a hybrid type of work. With employees working from home, communication and interpersonal relationships took the highest toll. That is why numerous regular coordination were introduced at all levels as well as dedicated well-being surveys. The survey results showed that employees are most inclined to hybrid work (78.74%). In a company where interpersonal relationships are the highest source of satisfaction among employees, occasional visits to the office or working coffee is a great way for employees to stay connected.

Being aware of the importance of retaining people our focus for this year was their experience and satisfaction. With our onboarding, offboarding, pulse, and climate surveys and processes we closely monitor the satisfaction of our employees, identify the causes, and propose solutions to potential problems related to employee satisfaction and engagement.

In 2021 we conducted an organizational climate survey and a 360° questionnaire, and the results of the climate survey and employee feedback led to the implementation of a meal allowance for all employees. As the corona measures finally eased, our weekly office supply of fruit also came back! Some of our successfully achieved well-being initiatives for this year are certainly: the company fitness challenge „Fit Happens“ and the business race „B2Run“, two humanitarian blood donation company drives, and the Tanita scale body fat measurement. On our internal social network Yammer, we've also launched the well-being channel, where on weekly basis we report and write the topics of healthy eating, exercise, mental health, etc. All this has only one goal - to preserve and strengthen interpersonal relations in the company, as well as the view and attitudes of employees towards the company. At the end of the day, our employees are the most valuable asset and heart of Span. Given that our turnover rate this year is lower than the average turnover rate of IT companies in general, we are happy to say that we succeeded in this mission and weren’t affected by the Great Resignation at all. 😊

The entire employee experience story at Span begins with our onboarding process and experience. Onboarding is a crucial process for setting up a good employee experience so we have a practice of always having at least one mentor for an employee, a regular 1-on-1 with the manager, and an HR and Performance Evaluation review after 6 months in Span. For ensuring a flexible onboarding that can be tailored according to employees' needs and feedback, we’ve implemented two questionnaires, the first questionnaire after 1 month in Span and the second one after 4 months in Span. Our Employee Experience Specialist monitors the results of these surveys and, if necessary, with the help of our HR Business Partners identifies the causes and proposes solutions to potential problems related to employee satisfaction and engagement. In the process of onboarding, we all partner up, alongside employees, to listen to each other’s expectations and adjust what’s needed. We also pay close attention to the offboarding process, where we have two questionnaires and an exit interview. This year we revised our old exit questionnaire and also implemented offboarding questionnaire. While in the exit questionnaire former employees answer questions regarding their departure, offboarding questionnaire covers questions regarding their experience of departure (how were they treated, how was communication in the process, and how was the process of the offboarding itself). Valuable information collected in that process helps us enhance the employee experience of existing and future employees and keep our retention rate high. Regarding the specific measures, we recognized these as the most indicative to us as measures of employee experience: Employee satisfaction, Employee productivity, Employee engagement, Employee wellness, Employee retention, Employee NET Promoter Score, Employee absenteeism, Employee-rating websites, and last but not less important, Customer ratings as we are a customer-centered company. In 2021 we conducted an organizational climate survey and a 360° questionnaire, and the results of the climate survey and employee feedback led to the implementation of a meal allowance for all employees.