What a year, right? It’s been over ten months since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic. We lived through lockdowns; we learned how to function with social isolation; we disinfected almost anything that could be disinfected; and most important of all, we made the abrupt shift to working from home. We did all that we can to embrace the ‘new normal.’ However, leading an IT outsourcing company through one of the most challenging years in the 21 century was anything but ‘normal.’ This year brought economies worldwide to their knees. Millions of people lost their jobs. And for so many industries, the future still looks uncertain.

So, what did this mean for the successful functioning of Cosmic Development? What did we, as an IT outsourcing provider, achieve despite the new reality? What were the main things that marked 2020 for us? 

Overcoming the challenges imposed by the new reality:

Introducing work from home policy

Since we are an IT outsourcing company with an employees-first policy and offices in three countries across four different locations, we took the prevention measures recommended by the WHO very seriously. After the first cases appeared in Canada, Serbia, and North Macedonia, we immediately shifted to working from home for the foreseeable future. 

As the situation with the virus escalated and it was clear that remote work was here to say, we made sure all our colleagues are safe and have all the essentials to do their work at their best. And having in mind that working from home was available for us even before the pandemic, we adopted this new way of functioning with ease. You can read more about introducing remote work and the useful tools we used here.

However, a huge role in the successful implementation of remote work as a permanent way of functioning had the HR department with representatives in each office location.

Keeping employees engaged during a worldwide pandemic

As we have all witnessed, this whole crisis happened overnight, and it majorly struck our social life. Within a short time-span, the entire world adopted a “new normal” where people practiced social distancing and avoided public gatherings. The bars were shut-down, the restaurants became take-outs, schools and day-care centers were closed, and we forgot what theaters look like. And, to top it all out, there is the global economic crisis and recession.

This harsh reality affected us all. Employers had little time to adapt and provide all the required conditions for successful operation. Whereas employees had to make sure they stay proficient and effective in a whole new scenario. And with the kids staying at home, caring for family members, and psychological pressure from the lockdowns, it became very stressful. 

Being the link between employers and employees, HR teams worldwide had to rethink their role as they had to adjust whole companies to social distancing practices and a new work environment. More than ever, they played a crucial role in keeping their teams productive, motivated, engaged, and connected.

Cosmic Development’s HR manager spoke thoroughly about measures that need to be taken in order to ensure employees’ wellbeing during these, well, let’s say, unprecedented times. She pointed out holistic and agile people management as best practices because every individual is different and unique in their own way. “To do so, our department has been in touch with all employees on a regular basis. Personal coaching in the form of one-on-one sessions were introduced for the most affected employees. While for the outgoing, we organized online contests and events where people could spend time with each other.”

The name we gave to these activities was “Cosmic Beats Isolation”, and we gotta say, it was fun being part of them.

Cosmic Development’s small wins during disruptive 2020:

1. High-quality work has never been at stake

From leadership to newbies, our offices (including the ‘virtual’ ones) have been a place where a bunch of skilled and dedicated professionals work together and achieve tangible results. Having these like-minded people gathered together and adding the nurturing company culture that Cosmic promotes resulted in one compact and very productive team.  

We talked with our team members on their experiences on several subjects, including: how our content editor keeps up with the ever-changing viral video market, overcoming stressful situations from a PHP Developer’s point of view, the technical challenges that video editors face, and how do they overcome them, and how to manage an agile team in these remote times.

Do you want to join our growing Cosmic family? We are hiring! Check out the most recent vacancies here! 

2. Events worth mentioning

In early March, two Rumblers, Marija and Natasha, attended the Digiday Publishing Summit for a good reason. As Business Development representatives and one of the first people to join the Rumble team at Cosmic, they had an excellent opportunity to mingle with the most prominent names in the publishing industry. An event where media leaders talked about the latest trends and useful tools. There were interactive workshops, speed networking sessions, and cocktail hours.   

Another event of no less importance was the Virtual HR Transformation Summit. Cosmic Development’s HR Manager Biljana took the stage and shared her valuable insights on contemporary HR practices and retention strategies. She joined a distinguished list of HR professionals to discuss Human Resources management’s most critical aspects of the new reality.

3. Constant growth has been maintained 

Thanks to our diligent Cosmic crew, we continued to grow even when the whole world stopped. Looking back, we can see incredible growth of some of our loyal clients and on-going scale-up of those who have joined us recently.

This year we have been working with clients worldwide and kept our presence in North America, Western Europe, Western Asia, and Australia. As more and more companies had no other choice but to go remote, our dedicated-team talent solution became an attractive option globally. 

Now let’s get back to our loyal clients. Rumble is winning the battle against Youtube, and here is why it became the obvious choice for video creators. If eager to learn more about Rumble, read how video content brought success to the platform. 

Another platform that saw incredible success this year was the AI-powered website builder Bookmark. What lies behind Bookmark’s success its combination of outstanding leadership and dedicated-team talent solution. Bookmark’s success story is now available, and you can become a part of it, especially if you are a full-stack developer.  

Let us help you scale up with the best IT outsourcing solution. We build dedicated teams for brands! Schedule a free consultation today! 

Watch Video: Cosmic Development 2020 Rewind – A Year in Pictures

With the vaccines rolling out slowly, we can say that we are looking to a brighter future in 2021. Our team is generally thankful for making it to 2021 with all employees being well and sound, bigger in size and experience, and ready for new challenges. What can be more valuable than walking out as a winner from one of the most challenging years in modern times?

The post Cosmic Development, an International IT Outsourcing Provider, is Looking Back at 2020 appeared first on Cosmic Development.

The Coronavirus pandemic spread rapidly all over the world and it caused us to stay at home in isolation so that we can keep safe from it. To help our employees deal better with the Coronavirus situation, we gave them advice on how to adjust to the idea of working from home and how to spend their isolation time more productively. Therefore, Cosmic Development decided to implement interactive online social tools in order to help our employees beat isolation. We decided to organize online contests and events for all our locations. In other words, Cosmic invited employees from Toronto, Skopje, Bitola, and Belgrade to participate in these online contests and events, and spend more time together with their colleagues. Read more below if you want to know more about how our employees beat isolation.

Cosmic Online Contests

The rules of these online contests are very simple. Employees are supposed to take photos or videos of the activity they do in order to prove that they are worthy candidates for the contest. The photos and videos must be from the beginning of the work-from-home policy. Any employee who provides photos or videos taken on a date prior to the Coronavirus pandemic will be disqualified. The employee who will be proclaimed the winner will receive a prize upon the return at work in one of our Cosmic offices. The online contests organized by Cosmic are the following:

• Most active employee
• Best creative parent
• Most ambitious employee
• Best entertainer
• Best photographer

Most Active Employee

The first round of the Cosmic Beats Isolation online contest is titled: Most Active Employee. The purpose of this category is to see how our employees spend their free time and whether they use it to keep themselves active, healthy, and most of all, happy. On the one hand, our employees could participate in this contest if they have developed new hobbies during the Coronavirus pandemic such as making handmade jewelry, handmade accessories, and clothes, writing poetry, painting, etc. On the other hand, our employees who have a fully amazing free sports time can also participate in this online contest, especially if they practice any type of sport at home (yoga, pilates, cardio), if they cook new recipes and eat healthy food prepared by themselves, or simply if they play logic and fun games with their families.  

Our most active employee during the isolation period is Milan Andreev. He provided us with photos of all the sports activities he does on a daily basis. He stays 100% physically active: he jogs, hikes, walks in nature, climbs, and most importantly, he motivates other colleagues to stay healthy during isolation and start being active. Well done Milan, you truly deserve this award.

Most Creative Parent

The second round of the Cosmic Beats Isolation online contest is titled: Most Creative Parent. The purpose of this category is to see how our employees spend their time at home with their children and what they do with them. We know that it is very challenging to keep our children at home all the time and make them stay engaged and happy during this isolation period. So, instead of letting them go out and playing with other kids, we – the parents – must find ways to keep our children engaged, and that includes us playing with them. To become the most creative parent in Cosmic, our employees need to take photos or videos of playing interactive games with their children at home, painting or drawing with them, helping them in the learning process and homework assignments, encouraging them to create handmade decorations or toys, and any other interesting ideas.

Stay tuned to discover who will be the winner of this category and what will be the next one.

Cosmic Recommends: TV Series

To find a way to stay at home in isolation and keep oneself occupied, we decided to create a Cosmic Recommends section. We asked our cool Cosmic employees to share with us which TV series they prefer. It’s nice to get a glimpse of our colleagues’ preferences during this Coronavirus period.  By doing this, we also offer our readers a list of the most popular TV series among our employees that they can watch during the isolation period. 

Cosmic Recommends: Food

While working from home, our Cosmic employees also work on their cooking skills and either develop their existing passion for cooking or they experiment with new hobbies. Either way, our VP of Engineering – Petar Shokarovski, who also has his own cooking blog, decided to share with us his recipes for Ratatouille and Eggs Benedict. Check out the photos below.

Gaming Wednesday

Cosmic decided to make Wednesdays more fun and introduced several games that are available to all of its employees, regardless of their location in the world. We call these days Gaming Wednesdays. For instance, we have played two online games as part of our Gaming Wednesday tournaments, on request of our employees. We always welcome new suggestions from our employees. As a result, they have the chance to suggest new games every week.

The first gaming tournament is in Counter-strike. Our male employees get to enjoy a good Counter-strike game along with their colleagues from other Cosmic offices. We also invite our female employees to join this tournament and spend several hours playing this game after working hours.

The second game of our Gaming Wednesday event is Pictionary. This game is inspired by the famous charades game when one player draws a word that is written on a piece of paper. However, this time, since it is an online game, the goal of the game Pictionary is for one person to draw a picture of the object they choose and let the other players guess what the drawing is. Therefore, employees need to think of a thing they like to draw, write the name of the thing in the program, and start drawing. The person that draws the word of their choice is not allowed to use letters, numbers, or words to explain the drawing. 

Cosmic Bar

We reserved the last workday of the week for our Cosmic Bar online event. Every Friday we organize an online party at a virtual Cosmic Bar where employees from all offices can hang out and enjoy the company of their colleagues. The only requirement to participate in the Cosmic Bar online event is to provide a drink of your own choice and be present in front of your computer or laptop at the designated time. The rest is our job. We play online drinking games such as “Never Have I Ever” and have fun after a long week of hard work from home. The rules of this game are probably familiar to many: for instance, one person says something they have never done, and everyone who has done that thing takes a drink.

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