On May 31, a festive event to award winners of the contest The Best IT Companies to Work for 2012 was held in Minsk, Belarus.

The contest was founded to identify the best Belarusian companies that created the most favorable conditions for work, and personal and career development. The portal Dev.by was the organizer of the contest, and the Scientific and Technological Association Inforpark was the general partner.

The contenders were assesses based on such criteria as comfortable atmosphere in the company and team, workplace equipment, correspondence of salaries to qualification levels, possibilities for professional and career development, and the scale of the implemented projects.

The contest comprised the following categories:

• The Best Company to Work for (11–50 employees)
• The Best Company to Work for (51–250 employees)
• The Best Company to Work for (250+ employees)
• Fair Deal
• Best for Career
• The Best IT Company to Work for (11–50 employees). Expert Opinion
• The Best IT Company to Work for (50+ employees). Expert Opinion

The contest consisted of the following two parts: an anonymous electronic survey of randomly selected employees and expert assessment.

The organizers distributed questionnaires among IBA employees, including developers, project managers, quality specialists, service specialists, and other employees. Of the 502 questionnaires, 346 were returned and processed. Employees of the following departments were involved:

• Four software development departments
• Technical department
• Business development department
• Marketing department for Europe and the US
• Marketing department for the CIS
• Financial department
• Quality department.

The second stage of the contest was the assessment of expert questionnaires that were distributed among profile specialists of IBA. This survey was evaluated by a special international expert group that comprised:

• Victor Maznyuk, Ukraine, President of the Ukrainian IT association Ukrainian Hi–Tech Initiative, co–founder of the Central and Eastern European Outsourcing Association (CEEOA), and founder of the company NET Technology Center WEB100, developer of IT solutions for B2B communications and business solutions based on social media technologies.
• Antanas Mitasiunas, Lithuania, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Informatics at the Vilnius University, founder and Managing Director of the IT company Mit–Soft, founder of the association National Software and Services Cluster, and certified consultant in ISO/IEC 15504–5 “Assessment of Software Development Processes: Software Life Cycle Processes”.
• Alexander Orlov, Russia; co–founder of Stratoplan.Ru; independent consultant in software project management, developer team management, motivation systems, employee retention, and career building; founder of the project Happy PM; author of the book Secrets of Developer Management; and author of a series of trainings on employee retention and motivation, and career building in IT.
• Elena Arsenyeva, Russia, Deputy CEO of the company Software People, Careerlab, organizer of IT conferences, trainings, and seminars with Russian and Western experts, including Tom DeMarko, Tim Lister, Edward Yourdon, Peter Hruschka, and Rex Black.

IBA was awarded the third prize in the category The Best Company to Work for (250+ employees) and was selected the winner in the category The Best IT Company to Work for (50+ employees). Expert Opinion.

Ivan Vroublevski, HR Director at IBA Minsk, commented: “Making a decision to participate in the contest, we were interested mostly in the results of the survey that was conducted as a part of the contest. We wanted to compare the results of the third–party survey with those of the internal IBA survey. It goes without saying that people with their knowledge and experience, commitment, and pride for the work they do are the main wealth of an enterprise. It is of vital importance for us to find out shortcomings, prepare and implement corrective actions, and evaluate and develop our advantages. Being one of the most successful companies in Belarus, IBA has more room for development and will be striving to be the best in all categories”.