Founder and CEO Maria Katrina Manalo e-sits down and tells how online talent platform and creatives provider Dezynspace has emerged more dignified, more resilient, and more successful than ever from the onset of the pandemic.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, online talent platform and creatives provider Dezynspace has seen a lot of interest and an upward trajectory in their “book a professional and pre-vetted graphic designer” business, much like Airbnb, where you can hire an exclusive graphic designer for your needs on demand.
But when the world started closing doors, so did opportunities for the emerging startup.
“It was hard. Before the pandemic, we’re steadily averaging a 40% month on month increase in revenue. But ever since the pandemic began, we saw a decline, and we received emails from our clients saying that they will put working with us on hold because they have their challenges as well. Ultimately they are also figuring out their process and systems of working from home,” Dezynspace Founder and CEO Maria Katrina Manalo said.
The pandemic forced the majority of businesses globally to close offices and adopt a work from home system. This also led to a slowdown of the global economy and has hurt small and big firms.
“We studied carefully and asked for team inputs on how we will proceed as a business. We decided to apply a temporary pay reduction to our employees instead of pausing operations so that we can continue operating month-on-month and still give our fully-employed designers salaries despite these challenging times,” Manalo said.
“Our employees experienced pay cut reduction, but with the promise that once the company is doing well revenue-wise, we will bring their salary back up to the normal rate,” she added.
Along with the decreasing bookings of graphic designers and revenue, the Dezynspace team were made to work remotely, which brought down the spirit of the team during the critical months of the quarantine since they have a culture of closeness and are used to happily working with each other.
“Our graphic designers became isolated in the confines of their own homes. And being creative artists, this had an impact on their emotion and their wellbeing,” the CEO said.
As a way of taking care of the company’s lifeblood — the employees — Dezynspace has initiated “Funday Thursday”, a program for their graphic designers where they can hang out every Thursday and bond online about things not related to work.
The company also shows appreciation to their employees by sending complimentary meals to them every week.
The female CEO said that this is her way of saying thank you to the employees for staying with Dezynspace through the difficult times. “We appreciate their efforts, and we also want to show how we care for our talents,” she said.
Came back up stronger
For a startup, Dezynspace was able to pull through immediately and survive the crisis as clients started pouring back five months into the pandemic. Clients resumed activities and projects after their work from home processes were already in place.
“It is not back to normal yet, but I can see that everyone is finding their way to adapt. And it is reflecting on our sales. We now have our clients getting back, asking us to do more design work, to catch up on the upcoming requirements they have for their company,” the Dezynspace CEO said.
Key learnings, advocacies, and beyond
It took a lot of bumps on the road. But for Dezynspace’s female visionary, Ms. Manalo, the key to storming any weather is to prioritize the wellbeing of employees and caring for them during hard times.
Being in the business of online talent sourcing, the talented female CEO believes in the potential of talents to be a disciplined and quality professional even with or without experience.
The pandemic presented new advocacy for the Dezynspace founder not just to make hiring graphic designers easier for clients who need them but also to train and educate old-timers and traditional talents to adapt and be adept in online work.
Given that a lot of people were rendered unemployed in this pandemic, Manalo sets her sight on empowering more people by giving them experience in doing online work. It will allow more people to grow their careers and skills despite being exposed to a tough labor market at present.
Since October, Dezynspace has been getting a 200% surge in job applications.
Moving forward, the female leader and visionary foresee that the trend in the labor market is inclined towards online talent sourcing. It is because companies have become increasingly conscious of labor costs and are seeking flexibility, options, less risk, and wanting to get the best quality and professional services for less.
“There will be a shift in today’s labor marketplace leaning towards online sourcing. Companies will have to come to terms in facing their skepticism [on online talent sourcing]. They will discover that this is a revolutionary business strategy that can provide flexibility for them to run their businesses,” Manalo said.
ABOUT DEZYNSPACE
Dezynspace is the leading online platform where you can easily book a graphic designer, exclusively attending to your design needs the whole 8 hours of the day, on a per demand basis.
The Dezynspace model eliminates the tedious hiring process and the administrative and management concerns for its clients while providing them with good quality and professional graphic design talents dedicated to help them with their creative needs.