OREANDA-NEWS. February 15, 2011. i-Free, a market leader in mobile content services in Russia and the CIS,* has became a laureate of the annual HR BRAND of the Year ceremony, run by HeadHunter Group. i-Free’s competition project obtained Gold Award.

In Russia, the HR BRAND of the Year Awards are a much-awaited highlight in the field of Human Resources. The competition rewards the best ideas in HR branding though an objective, honest judgment process. Some of the top experts in recruitment, marketing and HR consulting sit on the expert panel and jury of the Awards.

i-Free came to the competition with i-Free-Events, a project designed to retain and cement employee loyalty in times of corporate change. i-Free-Events won 1st Prize in the “Northern Capital” category: the golden “HR BRAND’2010” statuette.

Commenting i-Free`s award, the adviser of the "HR-BRAND 2010" Nina Osovitskaya said: "i-Free Company managed to make corporate holidays very interesting and as a result, according to our research, the level of involvement of employees has reached 86 %! The bright corporate culture of i-Free allows to keep employees in the company and to attract new talented candidates".

“We feel proud that a project of ours was so highly praised by the HR experts, but what makes us even more proud is that our project has achieved the exact goal it was designed for,” said Faina Lerner, who heads the Department of Corporate Development and HR at i-Free. “Indeed, we have gone through a challenging spell of corporate change without any losses. Not only have we retained our most valuable asset, the i-Free team; we have sizably broadened our internal network of informal communication, which really makes a difference for our company.”

At the core of i-Free-Events lies a new, homogenized approach to the staging and coverage of corporate events, which has brought forth a new corporate event matrix that meets a whole lot of HR development needs.

The central idea is to get employees actively involved in the preparatory process and maximized coverage of corporate events via multiple communication media. For advertising the events and spreading information, i-Free-Events employs the company's own communication resources, namely, its Intranet portal, Intranet paper and text messaging, as well as the social utilities VKontakte and Twitter, and numerous blogs, forums and specially designed websites.

Along with i-Free, the other HR BRAND of the Year 2010 laureates were: Google, Gazprom, Techart, KPMG, Rosbank, MTS, DHL, Castorama, STS Media, Transaero, NVision Group, Ford Motor Company, United Elements Group, Technostar, Alliance MERA, SKB Kontur, Est-a-Tet, and Ozon.ru.

More information on HR Brand of the Year 2010 Awards can be found on www.hrbrand.ru.