It was the worst of times.
Company-X co-founders Jeremy Hughes and David Hallett called a companywide meeting as New Zealand responded to the global pandemic with its first lockdown.
Hallett and Hughes were prepared for the worst and hoped for the best.
More than 50 people joined the call from home offices, bedrooms, dining rooms and lounges around New Zealand to hear the co-founders promise that they would take Company-X to a four-day week rather than lose anyone in a pandemic-propelled downturn.
The Company-X team took a collective sigh of relief.
Three years on and Company-X has retained and grown its team while avoiding going to a four-day week.
“We immediately expected a downturn and a struggle to retain our team,” Hughes reflected.
“Our goal was to keep everyone together and leave no one behind,” Hallett added.
Hughes and Hallett had spent eight years building a team of around 50 highly skilled, tightly knit, self-managing, and co-located team of analysts, architects, designers, developers, testers, and project managers.
Company-X’s team had earned a reputation creating tools and systems that help their clients make evidence-based decisions.
The software specialist is renowned for creating solutions that consolidate asset, financial and other statistical information from a range of sources to provide insights into performance.
Company-X supports clients to improve the quality of business-critical data for effective decision making.
The team also has deep expertise in simulation and virtual reality.
“We firmly believed we had a fantastic team that we wanted to retain,” Hughes said.
“Looking back, we are so pleased, grateful and thankful that we came through the last few years growing as a company and retaining the team,” Hallett said.
“We hired a bunch of people who are prepared to take initiative. That is one of the things that really made a difference,” Hallett said.
Company-X had implemented strategies that supported team members mental, physical, and emotional health during the pandemic.
“The vision was to help the team ‘stay the course’,” Hallett said.
“During the pandemic it was not unusual for team members to receive a phone call from a wellbeing representative asking how they were going.”
Company-X sent care packages to team members who tested positive for COVID-19.
“We are proud of what we have accomplished during the pandemic,” Hallett said.
“We have shown that we are a resilient company that is able to adapt to change,” Hughes concluded.