“The very first action we took was to map out our employees in order to identify the immediate needs of each and every team member,” said Ahuvy Mrad, HR Director at Salt Security. “We worked closely with every department manager to understand who needed what kind of support.”
“As the days of war continue, we are learning to create a new co-existence between work and life during war,” she continued. “As part of our effort, we are supporting parents who are finding themselves without childcare or school for their kids. We set up a Kids Zone in the office with various games and activities in order to allow parents to bring in their children and have some time to focus on work.”
Company name: Salt Security
Your name and title: Ahuvy Mrad, HR Director
Names of founders and upper management: Roey Eliyahu, Co-Founder & CEO. Michael Nicosia, Co- Founder & COO
Field of activity: Cyber
Number of employees: ~200
Office location: Israel
On a scale of 1-10, how much did the war disrupt operations at the company?
Three. The morale was very low in the first few days of the war. People were reeling from the news. In the first few days of the war, we all agreed that we were now in an emergency state and revised our priorities as an organization to the following:
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Supporting families
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Production stability
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Ongoing work
After several days, we observed that people wanted to come back to the office and that routine is an important anchor for many during this difficult time. We continue to map our capacity on a regular basis and do our best to provide personal attention to each and every individual in the company. We will continue to offer support in this new and challenging reality.
What consequences have you experienced from these disruptions?
Our road map velocity has been slightly affected as we currently do not have our full capacity – many are in reserves, etc. In addition, since the full team is not available, we are limiting the frequency of certain meetings such as brainstorming or team meetings to accommodate the current situation. We have been pleasantly surprised though by how much our team wants to work.
What are the two major challenges you are coping with these days?
Our first challenge was to create a routine that offers high morale for the teams and the site as a whole while providing the needed individual support to every single member of the team.
The second was doing what we could to meet our roadmap goals including maintaining the response time customers are used to receiving
What support do you provide to employees?
The very first action we took was to map out our employees in order to identify the immediate needs of each and every team member. We worked closely with every department manager to understand who needed what kind of support. The HR team made sure to call each and every employee and we sent a detailed questionnaire to assess the kind and level of support needed.
As the days of war continue, we are learning to create a new co-existence between work and life during war. As part of our effort, we are supporting parents who are finding themselves without childcare or school for their kids. We set up a Kids Zone in the office with various games and activities in order to allow parents to bring in their children and have some time to focus on work. We plan to continue to offer various children’s activities both at the office and at home. In addition, we are trying to help employees lighten the day-to-day load at home by offering an increase in the monthly budget for the Cibus food card.
We continue to be in regular touch with our employees, listen to their needs, and offer support. We have increased our written communication and company meetings, so we can all stay aligned and aware. We are doing our best to remind our people that it’s really OK that family comes first.
Finally, we have recognized the importance of helping our employees volunteer in various initiatives and understand that this is a significant part of bringing up morale. One of these initiatives includes offering our offices which include showers and a shelter as an alternative housing option for families from the south.
Do you have employees with foreign citizenship who asked to work from another country? If so, has movement been requested/approved?
We have employees with foreign citizenship but they have not requested to work from another country.
How do you communicate the situation to customers? Do you see hostility or support?
As soon as the situation broke out, we saw a very swift and empathetic response from our customers and partners. We received many calls and messages showing great concern and support. We were very touched by the goodwill from the many personal and professional relationships that we have nurtured over the years at Salt. Salt is a U.S.-headquartered company but many of our employees live in Israel. We communicated to our customers that all of our employees are currently safe and that we continue to monitor the situation and focus on their safety as our number one priority. We also communicated that our operations remain unaffected.
In the event employees feel they encounter hostility, how do you guide them to respond to the situation?
I am pleased to say that we have not encountered any hostility nor do we expect to see it. They do know that they can speak with HR or any of our leaders about anything.
Startups only: How do you communicate the situation to investors, and how are they reacting?
Our priority was to create transparency for our investors regarding the new set of priorities that we are following during this phase, the top of which is the safety of our employees. Along with that, we continue to ensure the stability of production and our customer responsiveness as we continue to move forward with the roadmap the company has previously set.
