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Essential changes at Gecko

I decided to write this blog post to update everyone on Gecko, and remain as transparent as possible so that it is clear how the pandemic is impacting us, and the decisions we are taking.

Before you dive into the details, I want to say up front, that these decisions are made to put Gecko in the best possible position, and allow us to operate as we do now indefinitely – ensuring no interruption to service for our customers and provide stability for our 30+ remaining employees. We are lucky to have money in the bank, and these decisions provide further security to the company, our employees, and our customers.

As the situation, surrounding coronavirus continues, and with increasing uncertainty about the impact on the Higher Education sector, we have had to revise our plan for 2020 significantly, accounting for the adjusted normal.

Unfortunately, that has meant that we have had to make some extremely difficult decisions to scale back our growth ambition and ensure that we can operate as usual but with added financial security to get through any further challenges that lie ahead.

First of all, we have had to let 5 members of our team go – a completely gut-wrenching decision, that has meant saying goodbye to talented people, people that we care about and have worked with closely. We hired them with all the right intentions, but with growth now difficult in the situation, we have had to make the decision to adjust accordingly.

Secondly, we have furloughed 4 members of our UK team, 3 junior engineers and 1 marketer who was hired to look after our events, this allows us to reduce costs further and then bring these people back once the situation improves.

Lastly, we have moved to a company-wide 4 day work week for all employees and reduced our salaries accordingly, therefore our team is effectively taking a 20% pay cut. We have an amazing team and we don’t want to lose any of them, this action allows us to reduce costs whilst maintaining the same size of team, and once things improve flex the hours back up.

Combined, these changes allow Gecko to have financial stability well into 2022. With no prospect of when the pandemic will subside, it’s important that we put our team and our company in the best possible position and that we are able to remain a reliable partner to our customers for many more years to come, as we have been for the past 8 years.

Even with these changes, Gecko is still 30+ people strong, so I want to thank all of our team for continuing to support the business, please give them your thanks the next time you speak with them – we really appreciate the support our customers continue to give us and your encouragement means everything to us.