MeetFrank is a recruitment startup.
And as you might imagine, we will be struck hard by the crisis.
Two weeks ago, we found ourselves facing a question: how to come out of this with enough money in the bank and a strong team.
But we weren’t going to hide our heads in the sand. In fact, we talked to our team, investors and clients; and took fast steps.
Our three priorities have been to support our team, help the community, and come out of the crisis stronger.
And we hope that openly telling about it will also inspire other companies to make the right decisions as well.
Our TOP 1 priority is to protect our team
In MeetFrank, the team is our second family. We want everyone to have a safe job and stable income throughout the crisis.
In order to do that, we had to cut the costs somehow. Otherwise, there would be no company and no work for anyone in a few months’ time.
The most obvious thing to do ahead of a crisis, small or big, is to secure 6-12 months of runway:
- Cut all non-critical costs
- Ask your business partners to reduce their fees
- Find additional revenue streams or get extra investment
But often, cutting costs is not enough to reach a sustainable expense level. And that’s when companies face a painful decision: they have to lower workforce costs.
We already see companies in the travel and transport sector suffer and go through painful layoffs.
To avoid letting people go, we chose another path where every team member contributes their share: a pay cut of 25%.
The salary cut was only applied to the employees whose gross salary is above €2000 gross per month. For the management team, the salary cut was applied from March 1, 2020. For the rest of the team from April 1, 2020. We will restore our salary levels when our revenue is back on February 2020 level.
How did it go?
Everyone in the team understood that taking a temporary pay cut is necessary to a) keep everyone on a payroll and b) help the company to survive.
By accepting a lower salary, our team not only helped each other, but also the community. We were able to keep every person in our strong team, and can launch new features that people need faster.
Supporting the community
To help job-seekers around the globe, we paused many ongoing projects to launch the Remote Work Feed in our app.
We also made a change in our product’s pricing plans: Now, all new companies hiring with MeetFrank will have a free trial and we will extend it throughout the crisis.
We also asked all our existing and past clients to add all their remote job offers to our app. The result? – We’ve been making some of our top results these past weeks in terms of job offers added. And 45% of all job applications made are for remote jobs.
Meanwhile, we are figuring out new product features to help people cope during the crisis.
The past two weeks have been intense. But we feel that we are set to come out of this stronger than ever before.
We are extremely thankful for the collective support of our team. You’re our heroes! Now let’s get through the hard times together.
P.S. If your company is hiring, please add your job offers to the MeetFrank platform to help the job-seekers. Sign up here.