We Have Been Shortlisted For Two Awards By Harrington Starr!

Huddle has recently been shortlisted for two prestigious awards by Harrington Star: The Best Workplace for Sports Trading and Best Employee On-Boarding Experience. These nominations underscore Huddle’s commitment to creating a dynamic, engaging, and supportive workplace that prioritizes both innovation and employee satisfaction. In this conversation with Josipa Beti, our VP of People and Culture, we explore what these nominations mean for Huddle and how the company continues to foster an exceptional work environment.

What does it mean to Huddle to be shortlisted for The Best Workplace for Sports Trading and Best Employee On-Boarding Experience?

Being shortlisted for both The Best Workplace for Sports Trading and Best Employee On-Boarding Experience is an incredible honor that reflects our commitment to building a dynamic and supportive environment at Huddle. These nominations are a testament to the culture we've created, where innovation, collaboration, and employee well-being are at the core of everything we do.

The Best Workplace for Sports Trading nomination highlights our efforts in fostering a workplace that empowers our teams, especially in high-pressure environments like live trading. We've built a culture that values teamwork, knowledge sharing, and open communication, allowing our traders to make meaningful contributions to the product and the overall company direction. It's not just about the work we do, but how we do it, creating an atmosphere where passion and performance thrive together.

Similarly, being recognized for Best Employee On-Boarding Experience affirms the thoughtfulness we've put into welcoming new hires. We believe that starting a new job can be a stressful experience, and we’ve worked hard to create an onboarding process that makes people feel supported, engaged, and set up for success from day one. Our approach involves the entire team, ensuring that new employees feel like an integral part of Huddle from the start, and we’ve streamlined this process with automation to ensure consistency and efficiency.

These nominations motivate us to continue raising the bar, driving both our technological advancements and our commitment to creating an exceptional employee experience. We’re excited and humbled to be recognized for the work that we all take pride in every day.

Huddle is known for its cutting-edge trading systems and dynamic environment in Sports Trading. Can you explain how Huddle’s approach to technology and collaboration has set it apart from the competition, and what makes Huddle one of the top 1% workplaces for sports trading professionals?

Huddle stands out with its cutting-edge trading systems, which combine advanced automation and real-time analytics with interfaces that allow traders to make impactful decisions at key moments. Since we are building these systems from the ground up, not hamstrung by legacy technology or outdated tech stacks, we can iterate rapidly and stay agile, enabling us to move faster than the competition. This flexibility gives our traders a unique level of input into the product lifecycle, allowing them to influence outcomes in ways rarely seen in other organizations.

Our high level of automation also sets us apart, allowing traders to focus on the intellectually challenging and value-adding aspects of their work, rather than getting stuck doing repetitive tasks. This approach empowers traders to do what they’re best at: making informed, strategic decisions. We actively encourage their feedback to refine and improve our models, ensuring that our technology continuously evolves to meet the needs of both our traders and our clients.

Even with 70 employees spread across Europe and the US, collaboration remains a cornerstone of our success. Our teams work seamlessly together, achieving goals and delivering best-in-class sports betting products. As a startup, Huddle provides a dynamic environment where everyone can make an impact and contribute to the product’s quality. Feedback is valued, efforts are recognized, and individuals have the opportunity to shape and innovate within the space.

Unlike larger companies, Huddle offers employees the chance to directly influence its product which has the potential to reshape the entire industry, all while fostering rapid professional growth. We are incredibly proud of our Sports Trading team, which plays a pivotal role in driving our success and setting us apart in a competitive market.

What makes Huddle’s Sports Trading team stand out, particularly in high-pressure environments like live trading?

Our Sports Trading team is truly exceptional in ways that are rarely found today. The foundation of our team is a shared passion for sports and live trading, which naturally fosters a strong sense of camaraderie and community. But beyond trading itself, being part of a startup means every team member has the opportunity to make a significant impact on the product. This sense of ownership and recognition makes the work not only more fun but also more meaningful. Everyone is deeply engaged, always willing to help, and quick to support and celebrate each other's accomplishments.

What really sets us apart is our vibrant, in-office environment. Unlike many remote workplaces, we thrive on being physically together, especially during high-pressure moments like live trading. In our Las Vegas office, where live trading happens, the atmosphere is electric, it's a true trading room, with a real buzz on game days. No one is isolated with headphones; instead, there’s constant conversation, sharing of information, and exchanging of opinions. With big screens everywhere and team spirit at its highest, the environment is both dynamic and collaborative, bringing out the best in everyone.

Our cutting-edge technology and state-of-the-art software architecture further enhance this experience, making Huddle not just a workplace, but a place where our team can truly thrive professionally while having fun together.

What specific efforts have been made to ensure that Huddle’s onboarding process is a top-tier experience for new hires?

We recognize that changing jobs is one of life’s most stressful events, and we’re committed to minimizing the stress for new hires by ensuring they feel welcomed and supported from day one.

At many companies, onboarding is seen as an HR responsibility. At Huddle, we take a different approach by actively involving team leads, managers, and team members throughout the entire process. We’ve developed comprehensive checklists and timelines tailored to each location, clearly outlining responsibilities from pre-onboarding through the entire onboarding period. This ensures that the most critical months for new hires are well-structured and focused on fostering connections, understanding individual needs, and allowing ample time and resources for a smooth transition.

A key part of our approach is automation. We’ve integrated all tasks and action points into our HR tool, ensuring that responsibilities are automatically assigned to the appropriate parties. This system keeps the onboarding process timely, reduces the risk of missed steps, and allows the People & Culture team to monitor progress at every stage.

Managers and team members play a vital role in helping new hires settle in by introducing them to team workflows, cross-team collaboration, and our company’s cultural norms. In some cases, managers assign a buddy to provide additional support, guiding new hires through both formal processes and informal aspects of the work environment.

By making onboarding a collective effort, we create a more personalized and engaging experience for new hires. This collaborative approach not only ensures consistency but also makes new employees feel supported and valued from day one. The result is a top-tier onboarding process that fosters confidence, engagement, and a smooth integration into Huddle’s dynamic work environment.

Huddle is a startup that operates globally with offices in the US and Europe. How does the company maintain a unified culture across different regions and time zones?

Maintaining a unified culture across regions and time zones has certainly been a journey for us at Huddle. With 70 employees spread between the US and Europe, it requires deliberate effort and thoughtful implementation of processes. We make a point to avoid creating HR processes just to tick boxes; every process we implement is intentional and comes at the right time to serve a genuine need. There are many ways how we ensure this, but just to name a few.

We put a lot of effort into making everyone feel equally welcome, whether they join in one of our offices or remotely. One of our key focuses has been revamping the onboarding experience. After gathering feedback and applying industry best practices, we ensured that all new hires, regardless of location, receive consistent training and information to smoothly integrate into the company and our culture from day one. This same approach informs everything we do at Huddle.

Before rolling out any new process, we introduce it to our managers, providing training and resources as needed, so they can effectively implement it within their teams. Once in place, we gather employee feedback and continuously refine our processes to meet the evolving needs of our workforce. This collaborative, iterative approach was instrumental in improving our processes and is part of our company-wide philosophy.

We also foster a culture of cross-team collaboration, and one of the things we hear most from our employees is how supportive and eager everyone is to share knowledge. To reinforce this, we have a recognition platform where praise is given publicly, with a strong focus on acknowledging knowledge sharing and teamwork. It doesn’t matter if a team is in the US or Europe, our teams are constantly collaborating across borders and time zones.

People and Culture drive these strategies, but our role is to enable managers and teams to take ownership of employee engagement and satisfaction from day one. We provide the tools and resources, but it's everyone at Huddle that brings them to life.

At Huddle, you don’t have just another job, it’s a lifestyle. We have fun, share knowledge, make an impact, and grow together, all while building the best-in-class sports betting product. This shared passion is what unites us, no matter where we are in the world.

Looking ahead, how do you plan to further enhance the employee experience at Huddle to ensure continued growth and satisfaction among employees?

We aim to continuously improve the workplace by cultivating a culture of collaboration and innovation, promoting open communication, and empowering our teams to take ownership of their work.

We have already implemented crucial initiatives such as employee engagement surveys to monitor satisfaction and develop actionable improvement plans. Additionally, we are establishing a job systematization framework with structured career development pathways and a comprehensive feedback process that enables employees to have clear and concrete development plans. We will continue to gather feedback from our managers and teams to refine these processes further.

Recognizing the pivotal role of managers in our culture, we are committed to strengthening their capabilities through targeted education and coaching. This will ensure they are equipped to excel in people management and foster a supportive atmosphere.

Ultimately, our goal is to create an employee experience that not only supports growth and development but also inspires long-term satisfaction and a profound sense of belonging at Huddle.

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