Q1 in Review: Navigating Change, Growing the Team, and Looking Ahead
As we close the books on the first half of the year and start to think about warm summer days at our cottages here in Finland, it’s a great time to pause and reflect. The start of the year brought a natural wave of transitions—saying goodbye to a few colleagues moving on to new adventures, while welcoming fresh energy into our ranks. Behind the day-to-day operations and project deadlines, a lot has been happening to ensure our team is growing, learning, and feeling supported.
Here is a look behind the scenes at what we’ve accomplished together over the last six months, and where we are heading next.
By the Numbers: H1 Growth & Recruitment
Bringing new talent on board while keeping up with our overarching strategy was a major focus this quarter.
We want to give a massive shoutout to our Project Managers who participated in the interview process. With 2-3 interview rounds per hire and a selected 8-10 candidates per role, their time and input were invaluable. We also successfully partnered with an outside headhunter to bring on two new Sales Managers, and we've seen fantastic internal growth, with team members stepping up to take on new responsibilities in Product Owner (PO) and Quality Assurance (QA) roles.
Upgrading How We Work
Growth isn't just about headcount; it's about evolving our environment and how we operate. This quarter, we took a hard look at our internal processes and rolled out several key updates:
- Policy Shifts: We officially rolled out our updated AI Policy to help us learn to use AI for efficiency. We also merged our Special Interests Groups (SIG) for AI and Software, which are now handling everything in one centralized place. Alongside this, we’ve refreshed several other foundational policies.
- Onboarding: Thanks to great collaboration across departments, we’ve smoothed out our onboarding process.
- Learning & Development: Every GIMster has 7.5 hours per month dedicated to self-development. While our formal tracking system captures only a portion of this, we are incredibly proud that a massive amount of our team's hands-on learning is happening dynamically within product development and active projects.
- Career Development: We have been actively working behind the scenes on a new career development model to better support our GIMsters' growth journeys.
Culture, Well-being, and Honest Feedback
Navigating the complexities of a hybrid working model, active recruitment, and strategy alignment is challenging, but seeing the team adapt and thrive makes it all worth it.
Based on our latest pulse checks, our overall Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is sitting at a solid +8. This is a great baseline, but there is always room to grow. One of the clearest takeaways from our GIMsters' recent input is that our internal feedback cycle needs some improvement. We hear our team, and we are actively working on it.
Additionally, as part of our commitment to our GIMsters' well-being, we have evaluated our benefits and will be transitioning to a new Occupational Health Care (OHC) provider in H2.
Looking Ahead to H2
My proudest moment as a solo HR lead this quarter was keeping our HR strategy and recruitment steady amidst a sea of moving parts. As we shift our focus to H2, the main priorities for our GIMsters' to have a smooth journey at GIM Robotics are:
- Compensation: Conducting a thorough compensation package analysis, ensuring transparent communication to both current and future GIMsters!
- Better Feedback: Embedding a more natural, continuous feedback cycle directly into our teams heading into autumn.
- Strategic Alignment: Finalizing our HR strategy to merge seamlessly with the broader company strategy document for July/August.
Ultimately, GIm Robotics' success is directly tied to the well-being and development of our GIMsters. By refining our processes and actively listening to our team, we are not just preparing for the next quarter—we are building a sustainable foundation for long-term excellence.
We look forward to sharing more milestones as our GIMsters continue to drive our mission forward.
If you are interested in joining GIM Robotics, please visit our Jobs site. If we don't have any jobs open at the moment, you are welcomed to Connect with us and be the first to hear about new opportunities!
