When given the choice, 70% of Asperii returned to the office after Covid-19

There’s a lot of buzz around how the ‘new normal’ will encourage employees to work in a hybrid model of splitting their time between home and office. While many expected office visits to hover around the 40% mark (two days per week), it was a little different at Asperii.

Nili Tschelak, Asperii’s HR Manager. Photo: Nili Tschelak

Of course, it’s not just the people that employees are happy to see again. “We have an amazing group of people - and also dogs… a dog-friendly office is always fun!” She continued.

Asperii joined CTech for its HR Post Covid series to share how the company has responded to returning to the office after more than a year of remote working.

Company Name: Asperii a subsidiary of Aman Group, a leading IT company

HR Leader: Nili Tschelak

Field of Activity: Asperii is a Salesforce Global Consulting Partner with focused expertise in Sales and Service Cloud. We deliver tailored Salesforce solutions to industry leaders in various industries, on a global scale.

Number of employees/location: We have about 100+ employees globally in Israel, the U.S., UK, and Germany.

Professional background of HR Manager:

I started my journey in Hitech Operations and understood pretty quickly that HR is my passion. I joined Asperii two and a half years ago as an HR Manager, and built the department and methods from scratch - with global HR processes, handling the full life cycle of employees, hiring amazing people, and being the focal point for all organizational development aspects as we continue growing fast.

On a scale of 1-10, how much did the coronavirus pandemic disrupt operations at the company?

As a global software company, we found out that despite not being able to fly anymore, we can do everything remotely and it worked well: meetings, demos, sales, and hiring. When Covid-19 hit, all of our team members moved to work from home. From an operational perspective, we’ve adjusted to the new reality fast, ensuring everyone has everything that is needed to be completely connected. We started having remote happy hours and company gatherings to keep being connected socially within our offices worldwide and had regular team morning meetings to touch base every day. As time went by, we started working in capsules mode, and eventually, we embraced a type of hybrid work model from home and the office and decided to let employees choose how many days a week they would like to come to the office. This works great for everyone as flexibility is an important aspect of work-life balance. I can tell you that in Israel, we have over 70% daily office capacity - our team enjoys in-person collaboration- and this is what makes Asperii unique. We have an amazing group of people - and also dogs (a dog-friendly office is always fun!).

From a hiring perspective, during the first few months we decided to put all open positions on hold to better understand the situation, but then in the second half of 2020, we hired 40 new employees! With massive growth and projects coming in it was actually a very productive year for HR.

What interesting technological tools do you use in employee management/recruitment?

We are using Microsoft Teams for our regular get-together time and chats. We also have Jira for projects and task management while for knowledge management we use Confluence. As for recruiting, we are using Comeet which we actually implemented in 2020 during Covid-19 due to our massive growth and the need to have ATS (applicant tracking system).

What positive and/or negative impact did the outbreak have on the human capital of the company?

I think one of the biggest positive impacts during the outbreak was the flexibility we’ve embraced: working from home might not be always easy, but it allowed us to be more flexible, have more time with our families, adopt a healthier lifestyle, and save the commute time to the office. We also started being more cautious about our time in meetings, so they got shorter.

On the other hand, Covid-19 also had its impact on our social interactions, which I believe people missed. Remote meetings can’t replace the water cooler conversations and lunchtime together at the office. The HR department is constantly working on increasing the level of engagement and helping the team feel they are working for a great company.

What are the two major challenges you are coping with these days?

As a global consulting firm, I think the main challenge we have these days is connecting all of our remote offices to the company culture again. We’ve hired many new remote teammates abroad and we are working hard on a plan to stay connected and engaged and have some face-to-face team gatherings in the near future, like company trips, fun days, and more.

Are you actively recruiting? If so, what is the process and where can the applicants find you?

Yes! We have many open positions in Israel, the U.S., and Germany (we are in the search of talented folks with Salesforce experience).

You can find our open positions and apply here.

Our hiring process is still conducted with remote meetings, and hopefully, in the near future, we’ll come back to our normal office interviews process. Either way, we promise you will find our process comfortable and pleasant and you’ll get the chance to meet some nice people along the way.

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?

I think the hybrid model will stay in place even after the pandemic. We will also continue hiring remotely for our global offices, which will open the doors to talented candidates outside of our office range who are more than welcome to apply.