How RedCore builds “immunity to change” and invests in efficiency: plans for 2026

RedCore CHRO Oksana Izmailova discusses the business group’s 2026 strategy, focusing on operational efficiency, AI integration, and initiatives to combat employee burnout.

Exclusive interview.- In a recent interview with Focus Gaming News, Oksana Izmailova, CHRO at RedCore, talked about how the business group will develop in 2026, what new tools will help improve the performance of every specialist, and what will be the main challenge in the coming year.

I would like to start with the results. Can you briefly summarise what you consider to be the main achievement of 2025?

The past year of 2025 became a period of transformation into the RedCore business group. This is our main achievement: we successfully implemented a new organisational model and launched new business units. But that’s not all. We completely redesigned all automation processes for the new structure.

Now the team has real “immunity to change.” This is because the business group’s specialists have also gone through a transformation in terms of their speed of thinking and expectations for the results of their work.

The second important point is engagement. It was a difficult year. But we still achieved an eNPS score of 62 per cent. This shows the high level of loyalty and trust that people have in the business group.

2025 was also a period of continued scaling. Our business group grew by 23 per cent, and today 5,000 specialists work with the RedCore brands.

What is the plan for 2026? Will the business group continue to scale?

We do not set a goal to increase our headcount. Our goal is to work with the efficiency of each team member. We also plan to automate as many operational tasks as possible so that our specialists have time to generate unique solutions for the market.

As a result, I think we will continue to grow anyway by opening new regional offices and launching new areas of work. But there is no need for us to grow to, say, 7,000 specialists.

You said that one of the tasks is to increase the efficiency of specialists. Will you implement new tools for the growth of specialists within RedCore in 2026?

We are introducing grade evaluation across the entire business group. The process will be as transparent as possible, and each specialist will be able to evaluate themselves. At the same time, we are launching career development maps and individual training maps for everyone. This is a logical step towards increasing expertise.

As for L&D (Learning & Development), we plan to increase the share of external training, both specialised and business-oriented.

What about work tools, such as AI? Do you plan to integrate new technologies more deeply into the work of the HR team?

We are already actively using AI. In recruiting, there are tools that simplify and sometimes even replace the work of sourcers. AI helps People Partners with performance reviews. We plan to implement this tool in the probation period monitoring process as well. In training, we create avatars that narrate courses instead of trainers, which makes online products more interactive and interesting. Of course, we will keep going in 2026. Automation and the implementation of AI tools that increase efficiency are one of our goals and a logical step.

You mentioned eNPS and the fact that specialists actively share feedback. What is RedCore most often praised for today, and what are the areas of growth for 2026?

It all depends on the team. Our specialists often say that our processes are very well structured. They note that we have great benefits, good salaries, and opportunities for growth and development.

People say that we, as a team, achieve great results. There is a lot of feedback like this.

Specialists want to have a clear understanding of our successes, the evaluation of their own work, and the plans for the year. Open communication is one of the values of our business group. And we always follow this principle. So we will continue to work to ensure that every specialist understands all processes and changes down to the smallest detail.

To conclude our conversation, looking at the market as a whole, what will be the main challenge or trend for RedCore in 2026?

Most of our specialists are Ukrainians, and for many years now, people have been living and working through difficult times. Meanwhile, we have a high pace of work. In this context, burnout and fatigue are now strongly felt.

Therefore, the main challenge is to find effective tools for recovery. We need a “magic wand” that will help retain people and restore their resources. Combating burnout will be one of the key topics of the year.