Many great initiatives start from a simple idea that is intended to solve a human-interest issue. As a small market and landlocked country, Armenia is not a target market for many big world businesses. Yet, its people also want to have the best—the most beautiful, the most cost-effective and the most functional things available. The idea of bringing the best that world has to offer to customers in Armenia was born 7 years ago and became Globbing.
Growing rapidly
Established in Yerevan in 2015, Globbing, the Global Shipping LLC, specializes in providing online shopping and delivery solutions to individuals and legal entities across Armenia. Over the course of 7 years, the company has opened 5 branches in Armenia and a branch in Stepanakert in Nagorno Karabakh, more than 170 lockers—with the largest locker network in the country—and set up Globbing Kazakhstan and Globbing Uzbekistan.
Yet, this rapid growth has led to some organisational problems associated with the lack of personnel management systems. This, in turn, led to a decline in labour productivity, a labour drain, and so on. At this point, the company learned about the “Advice for Small Business” programme supported by the EU4Business initiative and implemented by the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Globbing applied for support in organisational development and human resource management to increase HRM effectiveness, revise Globbing’s organizational structure, and develop system of incentives and feedback mechanisms.
Solving problems
“Before we received these advisory services, the company had already started standardising and institutionalising HR processes, procedures and documentation,” says Krist Marukyan, the Administrative Director at Globbing. “The consultants helped us to boost the process.”
Marukyan continues: “I was a Globbing customer myself since 2017, and have always admired the huge logistical system the company founders set up across the whole world. I joined Globbing exactly a year ago. Today, my main responsibilities include managing change related to the company's transition to corporate governance tools, processes, procedures, setting up checks and balances and eliminating conflicts of interest.”
Globbing received a grant worth €12,611 in December 2021, of which €5,405 was paid by the company, which helped to generate an organisational chart, to put together a compliance check-list for organisational policies, and to carry out SWOT, PEST and Porter's five forces analyses. Thanks to the funding, Globbing prepared an HRM function diagnosis report, organisational policies for HR functions, a human resource plan, a list of functions for departments and employees, job descriptions and employment contracts forms, performance appraisal tools, balanced scorecards, and KPIs.
“We successfully achieved the objectives of the project and made certain necessary adjustments once we went through the process,” says Marukyan, assessing Globbing’s gains from the cooperation programme. “The grant has mainly helped to speed up the institutionalisation processes that we had already started and to increase their overall effectiveness. It would otherwise have taken at least a year or two longer for us to get where we wanted to be.”
Key internal changes
As Marukyan explains, the comparatively large size of the company and the nature of the advisory grant make it hard to present the impact on first glance. “Since the project was meant to improve HR related processes, procedures and documentation, the impact was mostly internal. This is why the external image of the company, its online presence through the website and social media have not visibly been affected by this activity.”
Nevertheless, Marukyan is convinced that the EU4Business support brought the company to a new level where they see further effective development and growth and is confident that it will bring the company a higher profile. Globbing re-organised its structure and procedures to move smoothly its employees and customers to its vision.
