“Of the other 400 people we employed, 350 had no work to do. They were essentially agents and there were no calls.
Avi Meir, co-founder and CEO of European business travel unicorn TravelPerk, recalls the moment in 2020 when it became apparent that his company had become illegal due to restrictions imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. And no free time. Cash could be obtained (or so he was told), it seemed that there was only one course of action imaginable. Staff deserve to be fired.
It was a call from an investor that changed his mind. “He told me that if I didn’t need to lay people off, I shouldn’t do it. “
So Meir made up his mind not to cut jobs. Three years later, and looking back on that time with the 20/20 vision that comes in hindsight, he believes that by holding the company’s groups together, TravelPerk is in a good position to move forward once again. Restrictions were lifted.
And since then, TravelPerk has made great strides. After raising $104 million in January, the company cemented its unicorn standing with a valuation of $1. 4 billion. Today, TravelPerk, which focuses on business organization, employs 1,200 people compared to 400 in 2020. .
When I spoke with Meir, I was eager to learn more about how TravelPerk has navigated the pandemic and faced some profound adjustments in the business market. It turned out that much of our verbal exchange revolved around the importance of the workforce. According to Meir, the decision to retain staff was instrumental in the company’s ability to recover as the corporate market began to reopen.
So let’s go back to the first few months of 2020. On a personal level, Meir says he’s reluctant to throw other people to the economic wolves. “We have corporate values: the first is a seven-star experience for consumers. How do I qualify for a seven-star experience if we lay off employees?I didn’t want to fire anyone.
But the move has paid off for the company, especially in terms of retention.
“People saw us fighting for their jobs. This gave us a lot of loyalty,” he says. People don’t have a tendency to stay in tech, but we’ve kept other people on board. “
Is a greater degree of loyalty and/or commitment worth the cost?Well, if you have the resources for layoffs, it might be a good idea to hang in there. Oliver Shaw is the Managing Director of Orgvue, a UK company that offers diversity. workforce organization and transformation services. At the core of how the company operates is a SaaS platform that maps and visualizes the organizational structure.
In a survey of 500 companies, Orgvue found that 93% of executives were quick to make layoffs. Subsequently, more than a third (38%) expressed regret, resulting in negative results such as decreased engagement and reduced productivity.
And according to Shaw, laying off other people in tough times and rehiring them when expansion returns comes at a cost. “Even without the productivity issues and other hassles, the effort to rehire other people can be considerable,” he says. For him, hiring or rehiring can charge up to one year’s salary per individual. In other words, nothing is necessarily saved by reducing the wage bill.
And fighting for workers has an effect on performance, according to Eloise Skinner, an occupational psychotherapist. “Research indicates that high-performing groups are built on trust, strong support from senior leaders, and a shared vision: all “As a result of this decision, the control would possibly locate that team members are more willing to go ‘beyond’ the company’s values and mission,” Says.
That’s all well and good, but the challenge for TravelPerk (and this would hold true for any company) is to make it work, either monetarily or in terms of keeping other people busy. Financially, it helped that the company had raised capital before the pandemic. , thus having a monetary cushion. However, even with investments underway, the challenge is to chart a path out of the crisis. The plan to turn lemons into lemonade,” he says. The goal is to come out stronger.
To this end, the company will take advantage of this extended shutdown period to modernize its equipment and make acquisitions. These include British companies Click Travel and Susterra, Spanish risk control company Albatros and U. S. NextTravel in 2020 and 2021.
It was all kind of a gamble. No one may really know when the crisis will end and with what time the business industry will recover. All logic indicated that normalcy would return, at some point, especially since human beings have the ability to place a maximum price on face-to-face meetings. Facial contact.
“We didn’t evolve to become zoom animals,” Meir says. “We’ve evolved to become social animals. During the worst moments of the pandemic, that was my mantra. I thought we’d come back and meet in person. Yes, there will be some other aspect of this pandemic. Either the species will disappear or there will be some other facet. “
This view is supported by studies recently conducted in Britain through the Confederation of British Industry for the British Travel Association. The report shows that 90% of corporations travel to meet with components and consumers as a must-have component of building relationships. However, the report acknowledges that the decision to spend on travel is no longer so clear-cut. Video calls are still popular. This is reflected in the number of trips. Last November, a report by the European Union’s statistical agency, Eurostat, revealed that business travel had not yet recovered to 2019 levels.
But Meir says those numbers don’t give the full picture. The term business travel tends to conjure up photographs of angry men and women attending sales meetings. But there’s another organization of clients: other people who want to be physically on site, to make physical paintings. This cohort of other people began traveling again, almost as soon as possible. “Starting in the summer of 2020, we started adding customers. They were not painters of wisdom. Think about other people. who paints for engineering firms. They have to travel.
According to Meir, this is where the decision to retain began to pay off. “In the summer of 2020, no one else had a sales force. So in 2020 we are back to pre-Covid figures,” he says.
Meir says corporations want to be aware of the conversion of markets. There are new reasons why other people travel. It’s perhaps surprising that he mentions cornering as a driving factor. “In the age of hybrid work, team-building opportunities are crucial. There’s even more to bring other people together,” he says.
Meir says the company has tried to respond to changes in the market while continuing to innovate. He cites the importance of AI-based systems to the visitor experience, especially when it comes to booking complex trips or rescheduling them. “We train our data. ” I’ve found that if you need to replace your flight, we can do it in real-time with AI,” he explains. “If you paint for Ikea, for example, it can take you 3 days to replace a flight. You’d be expecting too much and having few options. In the meantime, the value would be updated. With AI, it can be replaced in real-time. “
Technology also plays a role in reducing unit prices and widening margins.
TravelPerk’s ability to weather the pandemic and grow in a still-limited market has undoubtedly been aided by timely investment rounds, adding a $104 million Series C in 2019, just before the pandemic. This has allowed the company to face demanding market situations and invest in technology. That said, as tech companies around the world continue to downsize, the company’s experience suggests that short-term cutbacks aren’t always the most productive way to achieve long-term growth.
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