The holiday is not canceled. How SoftServe, ZONE3000, Ciklum, Railsware and other IT companies entertained colleagues at corporate parties and what gifts they gave this year

SoftServe

As Natalya Shevelyova, Senior Employer Brand Manager Ukraine, SoftServe, told dev.ya, for the second year in a row, the largest Ukrainian service company has been organizing offline employee meetings in our offices in honor of the Christmas and New Year holidays. «The format has the symbolic name Togethering, which maximally reflects the main idea of ​​the event — to meet and be together at the end of a busy year,» she says.

This year, events took place in 14 cities in Ukraine. During Togethering, specialists have the opportunity to spend quality time together — both to communicate and to learn something new at master classes. For example, in Kyiv, they learned to make their own candles, and in Lviv, they created a didukh. Employees could also play board games, have a tasty snack, and capture the moment in the joint photo zone.

According to Natalia, SoftServe pays special attention to charity. This year, the offices organized a Charity Sale of corporate merchandise, and also involved local businesses that donate a percentage of sales to charity. «We will direct all donations to the charitable project of the Open Eyes corporate fund — Health Drive Mission, which provides mobile clinics in the border regions of Ukraine with equipment,» said Natalia.

ZONE3000

This year, ZONE3000 is celebrating the winter holidays in a format inspired by the concept of Ukrainian Christmas: warm, heartfelt, with an emphasis on care and support. «Like the previous two years, we do not bypass loud corporate events, but direct our efforts to charitable initiatives to support the military and civilians. However, our specialists were also pleased with pleasant gifts and holiday activities,» the company told dev.ua.

Interactive online events (virtual Christmas tree, quizzes, annual nominations and awards) and warm gifts were prepared for the team. Separately, ZONE3000 notes its colleagues who defend the country in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Individual gifts were prepared for them as a symbol of gratitude and support. «And according to a long-standing tradition, we exchange gifts in the Secret Santa format,» ZONE3000 said.

Special attention was paid to the children of our colleagues — they created traditional personalized video greetings from Grandfather Dobrodii for them, as well as fairy-tale adventures in a specially created Telegram bot.

Traditionally, an important element of the company’s holidays is charity. For the third year in a row, ZONE3000 has joined forces to support children from frontline regions, giving them gifts and smiles. This year, children also received the desired gifts from the company and specialists.

This year, the list of good deeds was joined by the «New Year’s Book Collection» — an initiative to donate books to the Kharkiv Military Hospital to replenish the hospital’s library. «We are confident that a good book can warm the soul even in the most difficult times. All these activities are not just about the holiday. They are about our unity, care, and strength, which help create miracles even in the most difficult moments,» the company notes.

Capgemini Engineering

This year, as in all recent years, Capgemini Engineering held an online meeting with employees. Directors presented the results of the year, reminded of the changes that have occurred during this time — such as the launch of a program for the comfortable return of colleagues who were previously mobilized and now have become veterans, or the introduction of «Diya.City». To add to the festive atmosphere, we also recognized employees who have made a significant contribution to the development of the company, congratulated them and sent symbolic gifts.

Cycle

After the start of the full-scale invasion, Ciklum abandoned traditional high-profile corporate events and instead introduced a format of offline connections with a charitable component. «This is our adapted to the new reality way of spending time together, fostering team spirit, sharing news, and doing good deeds for the army together,» the company told dev.ua.

This year, for example, in Kyiv, Lviv, and Dnipro, Siklumers gathered for Christmas connections to chat over a cup of aromatic cocoa, hold mini-auctions, and compete in a themed Christmas quiz. As always, the funds from the auctions were transferred to the partners of «Return Alive» for the needs of the defenders of Ukraine.

 

 

 

Traditionally, the sickle cellists also joined Secret Santa and gave each other holiday surprises. But the most cozy and heartfelt component of this year’s Christmas activities was our cooperation with the Children of Heroes Foundation. The sickle cellists received letters with wishes from the foundation’s wards and fulfilled children’s dreams by sending personalized gifts to the little ones.

Railsware

Daryna Kuzmyk, Talent&Culture Lead at Railsware, told dev.ua that this year the company held a New Year’s corporate party. «Traditionally, we choose one of our office locations, and this time the team met in Krakow. The program was thought out in such a way that it would be interesting for everyone, both extroverts and introverts, including bowling, contests, quizzes with prizes, and a disco. Colleagues from different countries came to Poland, who not only enjoyed the holiday, but also spent time together in the office before the party. This is important for us, since most of the team works remotely and from different countries — and regular online coffee still does not replace „live“ meetings,» she noted.

This year, due to security and other reasons, the company postponed the celebration in Ukraine, but Railsware hopes to organize a team meeting as soon as possible.

What is given to the team?

Instead of gifts, SoftServe currently prefers offline meetings. They have a deeper meaning — they provide an opportunity to gain new emotions and impressions, do a good deed during the Charity Sale, and simply meet in person instead of a Zoom meeting.

While preparing for the Christmas holidays, Capgemini Engineering realized that they could not only make a nice gift for their colleagues, but also support Ukrainian businesses. «Therefore, each of the items in our box is made by the hands of Ukrainian craftsmen. They were made literally in the reality in which we live — with shelling and power outages. Dozens of Ukrainians are involved in the creation of each of these products, from those who continue to plant tomatoes and grow grapes, to the accountants of each of these producers who pay taxes, filling the Ukrainian budget. Continuing their work now is a truly big challenge. And the fact that these businesses continue is admirable. Therefore, we decided to support them and share this admiration, as well as the stories of stoicism of these producers with our employees,» the company told dev.ua.

This box is called «Festive Table», and it has everything to create a little coziness in these difficult days. Among the products are honey from mined fields in the Mykolaiv region, dried tomatoes from the city of Chornobayvka, which everyone heard a lot about at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, a candle and candlestick from fourth-generation candlemakers, a linen napkin with a traditional Ukrainian embroidered symbol of the tree of life, cheese from people who have been running the farm for 24 years, and many other delicious things.

«We also took care of our mobilized colleagues and prepared separate boxes for them, because we understand that the military is unlikely to need a candle or a napkin. Therefore, we replaced items that are irrelevant to them with other goodies,» Capgemini Engineering noted.

This holiday season, Ciklum decided to make special gifts for little Ciklumers — the children of our colleagues. «The next generations will determine the vectors of our state’s development, so to support the intellectual potential of the nation, we decided to give children’s books from Ukrainian publishers as gifts. Our „Christmas elves“ carefully selected different books according to the age of the children so that they could fully enjoy the stories,» the company reported.

Railsware surprised IT professionals this year, says Daryna Kuzmyk. «This year, we made a special Advent calendar for our colleagues. For this, we prepared an online platform in advance, where each colleague had their own 24 windows, and also sent out a surprise box with 12 packages. During the pre-Christmas period, our specialists opened a new window every day: there was either a photo of a gift that needed to be opened, or an interesting challenge, video greeting, holiday workout, etc. No matter how mature and experienced our colleagues were, this „childish“, seemingly, format received positive feedback and diversified the last month of the year,» says the specialist.

Alina Voronenko, Head of People & Culture at Master of Code Global, said that this year the company prepared holiday sets full of warmth and comfort. The masters received bright hoodies in the company’s colors, greeting cards, and fragrant cream candles for hands. The children of the masters were presented with creative clay modeling kits that allow them to create their own unique animal figures. «This gift was also special because the little masters joined the fairy-tale mission: to help the lion Simba, who was evacuated from the Kharkiv region and is currently a resident of the Kovalivka ecopark in the Poltava region. On behalf of the children, the company provided financial support to create a modern and comfortable home (cabin) for Simba. In this way, we are trying to teach children to do good deeds from an early age,» Voronenko said.

Also, thanks to the joint efforts of all masters within the framework of the annual Kind Santa initiative, the company supported the defenders by purchasing and sending to the advanced radio-electronic combat system for the 118th brigade. «We choose cozy and caring gifts, reminding that everyone is an important part of a large team, where mutual assistance and support for each other allow us to change the world for the better,» says the Head of People & Culture Master of Code Global.

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