Every company has its important dates for reviewing results and making new plans. The last year brought about a new date for many IT companies to share—the start of remote work. This text is not about sadness or nostalgia for what we had, though. It is about changes, the growth opportunities they bring, and ways of taking those opportunities. In this article, we’ll share our philosophy and look back at what helped us save our team and keep growing. By the way, some of those things would work not only for business but also for private matters.

Flexibility

The lockdown has changed the workflows of many industries, not to mention the work routine of their employees. What about AMC Bridge? Our team has started working from home. Besides, we’ve stopped going on business trips, meeting at the office, and so on, which meant no work for back-office teams.

However, when we hire, we don’t hire for a short-term project; we hire for long-term employment at AMC Bridge. So, our priority was to avoid layoffs and retain people who invest their time and talent into the company’s growth. We offered our back-office team to transfer to other departments. Some office and travel specialists have started working on PR and business analysis; some recruiters moved into resource management.

This way, our colleagues have entered a new profession, and we have saved the team. When the situation has stabilized, some of the colleagues have returned to their previous jobs, while others have decided to pursue the new career.

Hiring freeze

The software engineering industry has suffered less than we had expected. However, certain fluctuations were still there: some clients paused their projects, others reduced the size of external teams or ended collaboration. It allowed us to transfer teams from those projects to new ones and stop recruiting new candidates.

Savings

Our next step was optimizing our expenses. Pandemic forecasts had varied, so in spring 2020, we decided to get ready for worst-case scenarios and cut down our expenses. In some cases, that wasn’t an issue: office expenses or business trips were out of the picture by default. But we also put our Trainee program on hold and moved performance and salary reviews from summer to fall, having preserved the tradition of semi-annual reviews.

Our last forced step was 10% pay cuts in all employees’ salary, including top management. Three months later, when the positive forecasts proved true, and we were sure that our clients had passed the turbulence zone, we paid back the retained percentage.

Board—team communication

Starting from April 2020, we’ve launched Town Hall meetings to enable communication between the four board members and the team. At the meetings, we discuss world and client news, AMC Bridge financial position and plans. The team can also ask the board a wide range of questions, from private to global.

Such meetings are just an example of the crisis driving potential. Since the board members cannot visit our regional development centers and meet the regional teams right now, the pandemics has suggested a better way of bringing the whole team together. Now all AMC Bridge employees meet every month.

We aim for transparency in team communication, so AMC Bridge will keep on having such online meetings.

Rest and holidays

We love working, so we know a good deal about rest as well. Since the lockdown, we’ve moved our team buildings, master classes, stretching, functional training, book and speaking clubs, board games, and so on online.

We also appreciate the importance of holidays, so over the lockdown, we’ve sent our colleagues 2,000 gifts for different occasions. We believe that there’s always a reason for joy, and we love adding joy to our team’s life.

Lockdown results

Despite the crisis, in 2020, we managed to increase our revenue by 8% compared to 2019. We started cooperation with 29 new clients, and we were happy to renew contracts with five old ones.

At the beginning of the strict lockdown, our team got reduced, but we are proud to say that it happened due to the hiring freeze, not layoffs. We didn’t hire new people, and the natural attrition rate was not high. Nevertheless, as of March 1, 2021, we have exceeded our last year’s hiring record.

In 2020, we were also ranked in the TOP-3 of the Best IT-Employer 2020 rating by DOU.ua and became number one in Chernivtsi City based on the employees’ voting results.

What’s next?

In 2021, we’ll keep hiring all over Ukraine. We plan to increase our technical team by 21%, expand our sales presence in Germany, the USA, and Japan, and start working with 30 new clients in the first quarter of the year.

Workplace safety is above all else for us, so we’ll still be working from home in the near future, but the team will be able to work from the office by request. This way we’ll avoid overcrowding.

We’ve learned we are ready to face unforeseen challenges, and we are curious as to what the future has for us in store.