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HR Post Covid
GeoEdge: “Our guiding principle has been to keep our employees safe and healthy”
HR professionals are usually in the middle between management and employees - and sometimes it’s a sticky situation
CTech | 10:02, 01.04.21
“As HR professionals, we’re often in the sticky position of being right in the middle between management and employees,” explained GeoEdge’s VP HR, Jodi Yanovich. “Being in unchartered territory, this often means having to make bold decisions. I’m grateful that our guiding principle has been to keep our employees safe and healthy and this has made the decision-making process much easier.”
It can be difficult to find the right balance when you’re the middle person. Here’s how GeoEdge found its guiding principles to care for its employees during Covid-19. Company Name: GeoEdge HR Leader: Jodi Yanovich, VP HR Field of Activity: Cyber/Ad-tech Number of employees/location: 60 employees worldwide with offices in Tel Aviv and New York with remote employees around the globe (China, Japan, Nepal, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK) Professional background of HR Manager: I have close to 20 years experience in Human Resources, with over 10 years in leadership positions, primarily working with global leadership teams in the tech sector. I hold an MBA majoring in Human Resources from the Colman College of Management Academic Studies On a scale of 1-10, how much did the coronavirus pandemic disrupt operations at the company? Our main operations remained intact, so I’d probably say 2 or 3. We did shift the way things are done and had to make quick adjustments to our organizational culture. Pre-Covid-19, GeoEdge was mainly a “work from the office” company. As a small, mature startup, we relied on informal processes, very positive office culture, and “water-cooler” chats as a way to brainstorm, promote initiatives and communicate in the company. Covid-19 threw us very quickly into a new “work from home” reality, one in which we needed to formalize our communication strategies and work processes in general. The management team quickly aligned on a strategy of prioritizing employees’ health and wellbeing and focusing on clear communication. Thankfully, as a solid bootstrap company that’s been around for over a decade, we were able to weather the storm successfully and made sure to constantly and clearly communicate to employees that despite the uncertainty surrounding us all in our personal lives, they could view their work environment as a stable one. What interesting technological tools do you use in employee management/recruitment? Our ATS is Comeet and we find the system to be very intuitive and user-friendly. With regards to other recruitment tools, we highly rely on LinkedIn Recruiter and I’m a big believer in pinpointing the right candidates for our open positions, in fact, we only used recruitment agencies for 10% of our recruitment during 2020.