Performance Management at Memgraph or How We Achieved Growth in the Pandemic Period
Memgraph holds bi-annual reviews that focus on peer-to-peer and employee-to-manager feedback. We also use performance management and engagement software to give and receive continuous real-time feedback in-between review cycles. By doing this, we are making sure that feedback is ongoing throughout the year.
Like employee performance management, the company performance management is built on continuous feedback and regular check-ins, sometimes planned and other times occurring more organically within the flow of work. While performance reviews assure that everybody is pulling in the same direction and pulling to the best of their individual abilities, employee engagement surveys paint a good picture of employee happiness and engagement and give a good assessment of whether the company is operating as efficiently and effectively as possible.
2020 in review
We ran an engagement survey at the beginning of 2021 because we wanted to see how everyone handled 2020, a year of unprecedented challenges and resilience.
Like so many others, the pandemic forced us to start working remotely. Looking back, it was our most defining moment. We immediately set up a home office budget to respond to the requirements of our employees (in addition to equipping them with office equipment - it would have been a shame to let all those desks and chairs just sit there in an empty office). We needed to adapt to remote and as a result started writing more and optimizing for the remote way of work. We were surprised by how easy and fairly straightforward it was to translate our work and culture into a virtual environment.
On the other hand, there were setbacks and uncertainties, like completing new financing round and hiring. We hustled harder than ever, and in December 2020, we secured another $6.7m round of funding led by M12 (Microsoft's Venture Fund), with participation from Heavybit, In-Q-Tel, Counterview Capital, ID4 Ventures, and Mundi Ventures. We even increased our headcount by 25% by the end of the year, and the engagement survey results were overwhelmingly positive.
2021 in review
In 2021, we decided to shift to remote work regardless of the covid situation, which meant we cancelled our office lease. The remote/hybrid workplace experiment is now core to our culture. You can read here about what remote work means in Memgraph and how we got there.
With the work from where work can happen approach, we've taken advantage of a broader talent pool which has allowed us to recruit highly talented team members. We managed to achieve the average annual growth rate of 26%, and our team is now distributed between six countries (Belgium, Croatia, Greece, Netherlands, Serbia and UK).
We continued the employee-centric approach throughout 2021 and now in 2022, especially when crafting employee benefits and policies.
On top of that, we revisited our compensation strategy and as a result we raised our salaries for all employees and made efforts to account for the effects of inflation. Our average salary has risen by as much as 30% since the beginning of the pandemic, and we raised salary ranges for all seniority levels.
We tied promotions to performance reviews and started conducting regular salary reviews to ensure that employees are appropriately compensated (we know the pros and cons of tying compensation to performance reviews). We managed to bring salaries to the top 10% in the local markets for senior roles and 5% for junior positions.
The most recent engagement survey shows that most Memgraph employees can see the positive impact of performance management on their work-life, proving that zeroing in on continuous feedback contributes to growth and success. If you want to be part of our success story, visit our careers page for open positions and drop us a line. You just might catch the boat for an engagement survey in March.
