Driving Business Growth in Turbulent Times from the Perspective of SOC Prime’s Director of People and Culture: Part II

Building Team Resilience and Fortitude While Facing the Challenges of Wartime: Insights from a Shared Experience 

In this second part of the interview with SOC Prime’s Director of People and Culture, Marina Aksyonova, we’ll gain insights into how the company supports its people and helps the team adapt to current challenges and how the business continuity plan (BCP) has transformed to address the wartime hurdles. To learn more about SOC Prime’s BCP, please refer to the first part of the interview and other articles from the dedicated series on the SOC Prime blog.

• How did the HR team contribute to the BCP transformation under wartime conditions?

With the escalation of the russia-Ukraine conflict, the HR team and Team Leads were involved in the workgroup developing a course of action to take care of people and their families while ensuring business continuity. We’ve taken all the steps covered as part of the updated business continuity strategy and applied them in practice, including the BCP training in Spain. This has also made the BCP more transparent and feasible while enabling the SOC Prime team to increase its adaptability to new working conditions. 

SOC Prime’s values are built on a sense of community and support for each other, therefore, the company managed to keep its business operations at full capacity even in the darkest times. 

In the first months since russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, international teams did their best to support their Ukrainian colleagues and took part in their responsibilities when the latter had to take some time to relocate to a safer place. 

All teams involved in the BCP preparation have successfully set up and tested all communications and adapted the business processes to the wartime conditions in the first two weeks since the war outbreak. By March 15, 2022, the majority of people relocated to safer places and could be 100% productive to ensure business continuity. 

• What initiatives did the HR team implement to help Ukrainian teammates smoothly adapt to changes and maintain productivity?

The HR team channeled effort into helping people solve relocation challenges and supporting them with everything they needed. As our people moved to different regions, we realized that it would be much easier to track their well-being and provide them with instant support by arranging them into locally-distributed groups (the so-called “hubs”) based on their geographical location. SOC Prime’s CEO, Andrii Bezverkhyi, came up with this approach inspired by the Israeli experience. We assigned the hub captains to be responsible for tracking people’s location in the particular region and ensuring all hub members are safe and can smoothly adapt to new working conditions. The HR team was always in sync with the hub captains assisting them with accommodation issues, provision of the necessary equipment, and other arrangements for teammates. Keeping always in touch and showing care helped us protect people’s physical and mental well-being while enhancing their work productivity.

Having to move to different locations, SOC Primers couldn’t schedule doctor’s appointments at the healthcare centers they used to attend before the war. To help SOC Primers address their urgent health concerns, the HR team facilitated virtual healthcare delivery by introducing a telemedicine initiative. This has genuinely contributed to the people’s well-being, helping them feel safer and supported. 

• Have the current political or economic challenges negatively affected the hiring process?

I must admit that despite the war in Ukraine and the global economic recession looming on the horizon, SOC Prime has achieved the hiring goals and expanded the company’s premises into Europe. We have opened a new office in Malaga, Spain, to broaden the support of our technology for Spanish-speaking customers, and are planning to open more locations in other countries. Moreover, throughout 2021-2022, we expanded our business into Australia, launching and evolving a new business direction in this region.

As for our hiring stats, in 2022, SOC Prime saw a steadily growing trend and welcomed more people on board than in 2020 and 2021. To compare, in 2021, our hiring stats increased by 12.5%, while in 2022, we employed 18.5% more people than in 2021, which can be considered solid proof of our continuous business growth. 

• What are the key ingredients of SOC Prime’s efficiency as an international team operating in multiple time zones and smoothly navigating through hard times?

No perks, motivation boosters, or stress-relieving techniques can directly affect team  productivity in such challenging times as we have been facing since February 24, 2022. This daunting experience displays SOC Prime’s ultra-responsiveness to force majeure events and the company’s high adaptability to changes, which ensures our business can operate successfully even in dark times. In my opinion, multiple factors lead to this super-resilience, however, people’s contribution based on our corporate culture values is paramount.