2013 was a great year for Qubiz; in 2014 we expect even more!

2013 was a great year for Qubiz. The company grew on multiple levels: new people joined us, valuable additions to the team, new projects started and our values became even stronger, reinforced by our success.

In the following lines Miruna, our Organisational Development Manager will share how Qubiz is approaching personal and professional development inside the company, people retention and other practices regarding the art of building a good team.

How do you manage the staff retention?

Miruna: Staff retention is crucial in providing quality services. In addition to making Qubiz a place where to strive professionally, we encourage them to develop a second specialization. We have created an open and friendly environment, where everyone can invest in his or her continuous growth. Our developers are encouraged to do more than simple execution tasks and by critical thinking and proactive approach, provide as much added value as they can. We make sure that the projects and tasks that the developers are working on are challenging and that they motivate them to continually develop their skills. At Qubiz everyone has a mentor who helps him or her sketch out the learning path that fits him the best, and also help them stay on the track, by having checkpoints every 6 months. We also sponsor certifications, professional training, master classes and research projects.

We hold regular team buildings and corporate social responsibility activities, while summer and winter retreats are excellent opportunities for employees and their loved ones to relax and have fun together.

Alina: How was 2013 regarding the retention?

Miruna: We have to say that retention practices start with a thorough recruitment process. At Qubiz we believe that it’s not only us choosing our employees, but also our employees choose us, it is both ways matching. During the process we make sure that the candidate is the best fit for the job, has the right commitment to it and understands very well how Qubiz looks like. We enjoy it when things come together naturally.

We have an organic growth each year, mainly through relocation of senior talent from the near-by cities and internship programs for juniors. In 2013, Qubiz experienced a growth in talent and we also opened an office in Cluj-Napoca, while keeping a good retention rate.In fact 90%+ has been the yearly retention rate ever since 2008, the year of the founding of the company. The high retention rate is also a direct outcome of the strong and highly appreciated principles we have in place in regards to our staff.

Alina: Which are the retention practices at Qubiz?

Miruna: There are three principles we rely on:

• First, there’s the lessons learned principle that stipulates that mistakes represent a source of information for improvement of skills and behaviours. When mistakes do happen we concentrate on finding the most appropriate solutions. These might also become part of the knowledge transfer cycle, fostering continuous learning.
• The second principle that helps us in retaining staff is following the double specialization objective, which means that each of the employees is encouraged to develop a secondary “most wanted” professional specialty. To do this, we invest in learning and development methods and tools, such as e-Learning platforms, in-class training, software conferences in Romania and abroad. We value new knowledge in on-the-job practice and opportunities to work on it in new projects.
• Last but not least, the third important principle is represented by our shared responsibility to make everybody feel good about their experience as an employee in Qubiz. We care a lot about the atmosphere in the company and we usually make sure that everybody will share their opinion about the circumstances they are impacted by. We also value fun as an important part of our daily activities.

Moreover, the retention practices at Qubiz are completed with CSR activities, in which we give back to different social communities, and of course, a lot of company employee benefits, covering twice-a-year team-buildings, Christmas parties, sports benefits and cakes when celebrating birthdays.In conclusion, we can say that at Qubiz we value our colleagues and this is reflected in our approach to HR management, which allows our developers to have a very rewarding career experience here. As shown above, this is driven by a combination between the variety of interesting projects to work with and the healthy principles we have implemented here.

by Alina