HR Post Covid
Covid-19 “got our creative juices flowing,” says EX.CO
Big problems require big solutions. Here’s how the content technology company kept its employees safe and sane during the pandemic
According to Pichoto, everyone at the company worked hard and they are seeing the results of that today - despite the “10/10” impact caused by Covid-19.
EX.CO’s Daniel Pichoto. Photo: Tal Shachar EX.CO joined CTech for its HR Post Covid series to discuss how the company - which has 100 employees in four countries - kept employee spirits high and the sense of community strong.
Company Name: EX.CO
HR Leader: Daniel Pichoto
Field of Activity: EX.CO is the leading content technology that companies use to better interact with their audience on their owned digital assets, meaningfully increasing engagement, conversion rates, and monetization.
Number of employees/location: 100 employees in Israel, the U.S., the UK, and Ukraine.
Professional background of HR Manager:
I come from organizational consultant roles and various HR leadership roles in global companies, in both the corporate and startup worlds. My key focus is building HR infrastructure in global startups to support the business’s growth. I’m privileged to work with great leaders that are passionate about what they do, and about empowering their people to succeed and excel.
On a scale of 1-10, how much did the coronavirus pandemic disrupt operations at the company?
It’s safe to say that the Coronavirus had a huge, 10/10, impact on every aspect of the life of every person in the world this past year, and our work life is a big part of that. Luckily, EX.CO - being a global operation working in multiple locations across countries and time zones - was very well set up for remote communications even before the pandemic - we were using HR and project management technologies (Bob, monday.com, and others) that made it manageable. So I can say the transition was more smooth for us than it may have been for others. No matter what disruptions come along, we stay true to our core values: Transparency, Collaboration, and Value to our clients.
What interesting technological tools do you use in employee management/recruitment?
Other than the more common tools we use for internal communications, like Slack and Bob, we love utilizing our own content platform as a way to engage employees around any message we want to deliver. For example, every new employee that joins creates an intro on our platform and shares it with the company. It makes the information about them so memorable that we feel like we know new people right away, which also helps in this remote work situation. We also use our platform for product updates, company surveys, and knowledge implementation through interactivity.
What positive and/or negative impact did the outbreak have on the human capital of the company?
While this wasn’t an easy year for anyone anywhere, it made our teams even more determined to succeed. It was important for us to keep the team strong and not furlough any employees during the difficult first months. That was our priority. The challenges the world was facing made everyone work together more than ever before, it got the creative juices flowing, with the passion to come out of this situation stronger. Everyone worked really hard and we are seeing the results of that today.
What are the two major challenges you are coping with these days?
We are growing and recruiting in all of our locations, so one challenge is to attract the right people to join our growing, passionate team. It’s important for us to keep the unique DNA we have so we are picky with the talents we recruit across different teams. We try to meet new people all the time, even if we’re not sure what relevant open position matches their skillset. A resume can’t really tell how much of a fit someone will be, but after chatting with them we realize the person is going to bring us a whole new perspective that we didn’t realize we need.
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The other challenge is to keep a sense of togetherness even while working remotely. Multiple quarantines, kids at home, personal challenges, and isolation on a whole new level require us to think about our team’s well-being constantly and how we make sure to SEE the people, be there for them and address their needs.
Are you actively recruiting? If so, what is the process and where can the applicants find you?
We have quite a few open positions right now, and we invite everyone to visit ex.co/careers/ and apply!
Which changes forced upon you by the circumstances will stay in place after Covid-19 is over, and which are you most eager to revert back to normal?
Honestly, we just really miss each other. Meeting our people in the kitchen every morning, chatting about life while making coffee, it’s those things we took for granted for so long that now don’t seem so trivial. The change we aim to keep is the flexibility of a hybrid working model, in which we will keep working remotely a few days a week combined with a few days in the office that allow the in-person magic that we all miss.
