When “I got the job” becomes “I accepted the offer”, changes are required!
Ivana Peričin is a Master of Psychology, a travel lover, and the HR manager of Delight Holding, which operates across the region and has around 100 employees.
We talked about her goals for the business, how it would evolve, and the standards she set for HR management.
Unique regional identity
One of Delight’s unique aspects is its complex and interconnected structure, consisting of several sectors that collaborate closely daily. A significant challenge is creating a seamless organizational flow that accommodates each team’s specificities.
We aim to preserve and strengthen regional cooperation among our teams, as daily regional communication allows us to share experiences, exchange essential information important for employee efficiency, and enhance our regional identity.
Establishing a unifying identity for the whole Delight group while embracing the unique specificities of each place we operate in is a key objective for our business culture. This unique identity is based on universal values upheld by everyone in the Delight group, both internally between colleagues and externally with our clients.
We also aim to intensify regional cross-team collaboration in the future, fostering a sense of belonging and unity among our teams, all working towards the same goal – client satisfaction.
Delight currently has around 100 employees and a wide network of subcontractors in local territories. Today, we are working on improving team structures through more efficient organization, development of company culture, and improvements in internal software and digital communication while retaining flexibility.
Since our clients come from a variety of sectors, our flexibility and open lines of communication help us to understand their needs.
Company culture makes the company alive!
Every company has a culture, whether it’s clearly defined or not. When looking at a company’s long-term success, culture is crucial alongside external business strategy as it reflects the quality of work, products, customer relationships, and the quality of life within the company. It makes the company a living organism and guides its overall quality.
At Delight, we strive to understand and embody our values dimensionally, both in our internal functioning and in our collaboration with clients. Some of our values are:
Responsibility – first and foremost, responsibility to ourselves, our values, and interests, followed by responsibility to our team and colleagues we work with, responsibility to the company we are a part of, and of course, responsibility to the client and their needs, as they are the main reason we exist as a company.
Transparency – a clear setting of expectations, determining deadlines, and adhering to them, transparent sharing of information. Transparency is essential for efficiency and ethics while respecting our colleagues and clients.
Flexibility – not only in hybrid, remote work, and flexible working hours, but also in openness to different opinions, sensibilities, and needs. All of this contributes to faster adaptability, not only to changes in local market dynamics but also to global trends that inevitably affect us through our clients.
Teamwork – both internally and with clients during project execution. The projects we work on are often long-term and require continuous presence and evaluation of the entire process.
Integrity – alignment of internal values that exist “on paper” with what truly happens within the company, how we represent the company, build our brand, and act daily in the external market.
Culture is crucial for the quality of life within the company and greatly influences our company’s ability to adapt to the rapid changes happening in the global market. Our attachment to the company, how well we feel as part of it, our efficiency, and our willingness to change, embrace innovations, and follow market trends from month to month are all significantly influenced by the company’s culture.
Culture determines who we accept and exclude from the company. Today, when the concept of “team fit” exists, anyone who does not share these values may not function well or disrupt our established homeostasis. What’s important is to create a healthy system that naturally excludes what doesn’t belong and strengthens the segments that are good and healthy, ensuring the company’s continuity and improvement.
Global and regional recruitments give us an excellent insight into current values in the job market. For example, in the region, the importance of flexibility has become evident lately, especially in Slovenia, Croatia, and even more so in Serbia compared to previous years. The focus on delivering good results, creativity, development, and the desire for flexibility in terms of location and sliding working hours have increased. Creativity seems to be increasingly present as a need among employees. Delight can boast about this, especially considering the diverse spectrum of clients we collaborate with. Financial stability is undoubtedly essential, but it seems that it is often not decisive for whether we will stay somewhere and be fulfilled in our workplace.
Continuous development and adaptation to change are vital. The psychological safety environment is also important, as it provides us with space for continuous growth – a space to make mistakes, learn from them, and evolve. Without mistakes, there is no growth; perfection is an illusion. To be competitive in the market, continuous growth is necessary for both individuals and the company.
What I truly believe and what particularly motivates me at Delight is the significance of the work environment, especially as the demands of employees have changed considerably. It’s fascinating to observe how the workspace influences relationships within teams. Flexibility not only entails hybrid work but also working in a physically healthy atmosphere, where we can change our location during the workday, take a walk through the space, and be inspired by the environment itself. The workspace is crucial for connecting employees; it serves as inspiration and the foundation of our company identity. The workspace can be the base that provides stability and routine when needed, while simultaneously offering flexibility when the need arises.
Today, companies face the challenge of accommodating different generations with diverse approaches to work, values, and demands, and the workspace should connect and reconcile these differences. This is a significant challenge for those designing the workspace, but it’s fantastic to see how people connect and integrate into a unique system.
To be competitive in the market, rapid adaptability has become necessary because changes are constantly happening in the global market and our personal lives.
With the opening of the global market and digitization, high-quality employees have many more opportunities than it has been before. We all compete for quality employees who continuously work on themselves, have a desire for self-improvement, and are unafraid of change. However, companies need to be aware that every professional, aware of their experience and potential, also has self-respect and will seek a company that respects them as human beings and as an employee. Their criteria will inevitably be high, and this requires us, as a company, to continuously improve and advance our human resources strategies.
Thanks to the opening of the global market, conditions have drastically changed, and there is a visible trend toward further changes. For instance, when talking about recruitment, it used to be typical to say, “I got the job,” and now we say, “I accepted the offer.” Through this sentence, we can see the change in the psychology of power in the job market and the change in the relationship between employers and employees.
Humanity, ethics, knowledge, transparency, reciprocity, and a common goal can take us far and significantly improve us both as individuals and as a business.
