Our world is marked by significant environmental and social challenges. We are all responsible for addressing the challenges that exist in the society we are a part of. We at Redwerk want our contribution to be meaningful and sustainable, and we wish to create a long-term impact.
As we enter our 20th year, we reaffirm our dedication to sustainable business practices. We understand that true success lies in balancing economic growth with social and environmental responsibility. We outlined our main sustainability objectives, our long-standing CSR practices, and the advancements we’ve achieved toward each in 2024 in this report.
This report highlights our ongoing efforts to foster a supportive and rewarding work environment for our employees, our initiatives to give back to the community, and our commitment to minimizing our environmental footprint. We believe that by prioritizing these key areas, we can create a better future for everyone.
Community Involvement and Development
At Redwerk, we’ve always considered community involvement and development a top priority, aiming to make a positive impact that extends beyond the tech sector. We know that our influence reaches far beyond the digital world and into the lives of real people.
Helping less privileged
Over the years, we’ve supported and initiated numerous charitable initiatives, including assisting seniors during COVID-19, visiting with seniors and individuals with disabilities in nursing homes, donating computer equipment to orphanages, supporting children with heart conditions, providing Christmas gifts to children in foster care, and supplying food and medicine to animal shelters.
Supporting Ukraine
In 2024, our efforts have been deeply focused on addressing the severe challenges posed by the ongoing and unprovoked and unjustified Russian invasion.
During key milestones, such as our company anniversary, we remain committed to supporting vital relief efforts by organizing fundraisers and matching every contribution made by our employees.
New Year’s Miracle Campaign
To celebrate the New Year, we organized the “New Year’s Miracle” campaign, fulfilling the wishes of 47 children from low-income families, orphans and children left without parental care. With recommendations from our teammates, we connected with large families and family-type shelters, each with a unique and challenging story.
Some lost their homes due to enemy missiles, others had a family breadwinner injured in the war, and some are families with seriously ill children. Every Redwerk participant in the campaign received a letter from a child with their wish list and had the opportunity to make that wish come true.
Supporting Volunteers in Zaporizhzhia
We transformed our Zaporizhzhia office into a volunteer hub, providing space for the charitable organizations “Good Place” and “Source of Unity” Foundation to hold meetings and IT training events. The hub is set to host courses in 3D modeling, robotics for teenagers, and other volunteer initiatives.
Charitable Donation from Our Game “Orky & Pakety”
We always donate the net profits from sales of our game Orky & Pakety to charity. In July 2024, we transferred UAH 10,000 to the Through the War foundation, which provides shelter for the elderly, aids those affected by hostilities, and supports the Armed Forces and Territorial Defense Forces.
Our funds were specifically allocated to purchase fabric for camouflage nets, which are crucial for protecting the lives of soldiers and their equipment.
Charity Auction
On Ukraine’s Defender and Defenders’ Day, we came together for a powerful Charity Auction, raising an inspiring UAH 21,850 through the sale of 12 unique auction items and the heartfelt contributions of our teammates.
Reflecting our company values of unity and responsibility, we matched every hryvnia, doubling the impact to a remarkable UAH 43,700—all dedicated to supporting Ukraine’s Armed Forces. Together, with a shared commitment to making a difference, we proudly stand in support of those who protect us.
Fostering local economy
Our policy of employing experts who remain in Ukraine remains in place. This strategy helps to sustain and expand the local economy in addition to giving us access to the wealth of talent in our areas. We are investing in the economic stability and advancement of our communities by generating employment opportunities inside Ukraine.
Labor Practices
The foundation of our development and innovation is our workforce. We are proud of their dedication, professionalism, and strong work ethic. Because of their talents and the enormous value they provide to our business and the global IT community, we try to establish a welcoming, equitable, psychologically secure, and forward-thinking work environment.
Fair compensation
Redwerk’s HR department actively monitors job market trends to ensure our employees receive fair and competitive compensation. We conduct annual performance reviews to support our teammates’ growth, providing opportunities for promotion and corresponding salary increases.
Tax assistance
We help employees file their taxes in order to promote a positive work atmosphere. We recognize that it can be difficult to navigate the intricacies of tax laws. We have brought on board professional payroll specialists who are knowledgeable about tax rules and processes in order to lessen this load. These experts are on hand to help our staff members with any tax-related issues, guaranteeing speedy and accurate filing.
Work-life balance policies
We know that a well-rested, happy employee is twice as productive as an overworked one. For this reason, we have a strict no-overtime policy encouraging employees to stick to the 8-hour workday. On top of that, we give our employees complete control of their schedules. They can work flexible hours whenever they feel most productive or have an opportunity to do so. The only condition is that they must show up to work until 2 p.m. and mention their working hours.
Home office setup
Laptops, displays, headphones, testing devices, power banks, office desks, and other items to build up an ergonomic workplace are among the important tools the corporation gives its employees for their jobs. This program guarantees that our staff members have the resources they need to carry out their jobs effectively and comfortably. Even outside of the conventional workplace environment, we want to encourage our workers’ well-being and productivity.
Wellness stipends
It’s critical to take care of employees’ emotional health during these trying times. We’ve implemented wellness stipends to encourage coworkers to set aside time for rest. Each employee is eligible to receive a set monthly stipend that can be used for massages, yoga, pilates, weight or cardio training, swimming, dancing lessons, therapy, or other services.
Employee engagement and development
Any remote employment might have a negative impact on one’s mental health. To avoid social isolation, we schedule in-person and virtual team-building activities and meetings every two or three months. Since the beginning of 2024, we have already held 5 team-building events, 2 of which were offline.
By purchasing scholarly works, compensating attendance at conferences or courses, and providing free English, German, and Spanish instruction, we help our staff members advance their education.
We express our thanks and give tangible presents to our staff in recognition of their dedication. Even though we evaluate employees’ performance and contributions regardless of tenure and see multiple benefits in healthy turnover, we want to recognize our teammates’ loyalty and make them feel valued.
On their anniversary, employees who have worked with us for five years can select the gift they would want to receive. The PS5, GoPro cameras, iPhone 14, Apple Watch Ultra, Galaxy S23, MacBook Air, and other gadgets were among the anniversary gifts we presented.
Human Rights
Redwerk respects internationally recognized human rights and complies with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. At Redwerk, all work is voluntary, and employees are free to terminate their employment at any time, giving a two-week notice.
Inclusive workplace
We strive to make our hiring process transparent and bias-free. We welcome applications from people of all genders, ages, ethnicities, faiths, sexual orientations, and other backgrounds. We choose individuals based on their qualifications and experience.
Women continue to be underrepresented in technology in Ukraine. Redwerk is determined to alter the current situation. So far, female professionals make up 46,3% of our team.
We also share stories of women we employ or engage with professionally, hoping that more women will explore tech careers and won’t let century-old stereotypes creep in and plant a seed of doubt.
Zero pay gap
We make certain that all of our workers receive just compensation for their abilities and services, irrespective of their gender or any other consideration. In addition to protecting our workers’ human rights, this dedication to equality promotes a respectful and equitable work environment.
Equal opportunities
Every employee has equal access to professional possibilities and educational resources thanks to Redwerk. In order to stop any abuse or harassment, we also regularly poll our employees on their happiness.
Fair Operating Practices
Redwerk has been delivering software development services to businesses in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand since 2005. The primary reason for our long-standing success is our resolve to provide quality services and build strong, lasting relations with our clients. The latter would only be possible with adhering to fair operating practices.
Legally binding agreements
Our first interaction with potential clients starts with signing an NDA to guarantee the confidentiality of the information they share with us. If they choose us as their IT services provider, we proceed with signing a contract detailing the responsibilities of both parties. Once the project is finished, we can sign an SLA binding us to maintain the product and respond to critical issues.
No vendor lock-in
When developing or testing software, we document all of our workflows and follow the industry standards to ensure the code we deliver is easy to understand, reuse, and maintain. This is also crucial for a future hand-off process. If our client wants to end our partnership, there are no vendor lock-in issues.
Transparent workflows
To ensure a transparent process, we log all working hours in Jira or other issue-tracking systems our customers use. We engage with clients based on the Time & Material model, meaning they only pay for the actual work done within the previously agreed scope.
Over 70% of our clients recommend us to their friends and business partners, which signifies their high satisfaction with our services.
Responsible marketing
We solely use moral business tactics while marketing our services. We use innovation, value generation, and ongoing upskilling as our competitive strategies. We employ white hat SEO and have never damaged our rivals’ reputations since we would rather highlight our advantages than bring someone down.
Sustainable hiring practices
As a business employing 90 professionals, we know how hard it is to find and retain top talent. We employ sustainable recruiting practices in the hopes that other market participants would do the same. We avoid headhunting because we believe it to be immoral and extremely disruptive.
This is known as sustainable hiring. To ensure that candidates approach us first rather than the other way around, we instead concentrate on enhancing our corporate culture and modernizing or extending employee benefits.
Environmental Impacts
No second Earth exists. It’s true, which is why it’s so important to consider our environmental impact and teach people about the environment. It is our collective duty as members of the global IT community to protect the environment for coming generations. Although lowering our carbon footprint is an ongoing process, here are our current achievements.
Improving hardware management
Beyond the adoption of modern hardware, Redwerk has implemented power-saving settings across all devices to further reduce energy consumption. This approach helps us cut down on wasteful energy use during non-working hours, ensuring minimal impact on the environment.
Reducing CO2 emissions
Since there is no need for daily transportation, all remote work lowers carbon emissions. We can lessen our carbon impact by lowering the number of cars on the road. When we reopened our offices following the COVID-19 outbreak, we did not impose any return-to-the-office procedures because we think that workplace attendance should be voluntary.
Using digital handouts at conferences
Attending tech conferences is crucial to our business operations, and we are convinced it can be done sustainably. For instance, we no longer print business cards, booklets, or other paper handouts since we are aware that attendees will discard them as soon as they exit the conference room. Rather, we make use of digital handouts that may be accessed via QR codes.
Developing solutions that enable change
However, our biggest environmental impact is helping green tech startups bring their innovative solutions to life. We’ve helped Kooky, a Swiss green business, launch the first reusable cup system in Switzerland. We developed a SaaS product that allows the Kooky team and their restaurant partners to manage and track the use of reusable cups. It became the Gold Winner of the Vega Digital Awards 2023.
Another green project we contributed to is My Bike Valet, a patent-pending, space-efficient bike-parking system. We developed iOS and Android solutions, helping cyclists easily find and book a safe bike parking spot in a specific area.
Consumer Issues
Redwerk’s goal is to assist companies all around the world in providing customers with unmatched digital experiences. We handle the technical aspects of products so that businesses may concentrate on growing their businesses.
Data privacy & security
Redwerk’s mission is to help businesses worldwide deliver unparalleled digital experiences to consumers. We empower companies to focus on their business growth while taking care of the technical side of their products.
Data privacy & security
Safeguarding our clients’ data is critical to our corporate social responsibility. We have implemented robust security measures and adhere to global privacy standards to protect our clients’ data. We believe in transparency and keep our clients informed about how we handle their data and ensure its integrity.
Honest communication
When communicating with our clients, we are very clear on what we can and cannot do and what timeframes are realistic for the needed scope of work. We don’t onboard new clients when we are at full capacity, and we certainly don’t work on projects beyond our expertise.
Managed services
Redwerk provides managed services, meaning we assign a project manager/business analyst to each project to handle communication, planning, value creation, bottleneck prevention, and conflict resolution. This approach allows us and our clients to stay on the same page and build trustful, lasting relationships.
Customer satisfaction surveys
We conduct customer satisfaction surveys regularly to identify early signs of miscommunication or dissatisfaction and resolve those issues amicably. We use the feedback from our clients to improve our services, streamline workflows, and increase the value we create for our clients.
Monthly reporting
We hold ourselves accountable by preparing monthly delivery reports for each client detailing what has been done, what issues arose and how they were resolved, and how we suggest improving certain workflows to increase productivity and cost-efficiency. We may also include recommendations on how to fine-tune certain features to increase usability and overall customer satisfaction.
Organizational Governance
Our organizational governance strategy is completely consistent with our guiding principles of cooperation, openness, and creativity.
Flat Organizational Structure
Redwerk’s flat organizational style encourages initiative, individual work, open exchange of ideas, and innovative thinking. It makes it possible for there to be a collaborative and respectful culture where everyone’s opinions are respected and taken into account.
Employee Empowerment
Employee empowerment is a fundamental tenet of our organizational governance. We offer our team members the latitude to make decisions pertaining to their job because we trust them to take the initiative. High-quality work is the result of this empowerment, which also raises morale and workplace satisfaction.
Cloud infrastructure
The cloud securely houses all of the vital infrastructure, including backups, client data, and code repositories. This guarantees the safety and integrity of our data by enabling us to take use of the strong security features offered by top cloud service providers.
By offering disaster recovery options, cloud storage protects our vital infrastructure from any data loss situations. We rigorously follow all legal standards for cloud data protection since we recognize how important data privacy is.
Emergency support
In the event of an emergency, we can provide financial help to our teammates thanks to the emergency fund we’ve set up. We set aside $140,000 for staff relocation to secure locations just prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Four teammates who enlisted in the Ukrainian Armed Forces also received their full wages from us.
In addition to providing financial support, we leverage our business network to locate inexpensive homes and aid colleagues in finding housing overseas or in safer regions of Ukraine.
Supply Chain
The necessity of assisting local companies to sustain Ukraine’s economy was highlighted by the war in that country. We only work with Ukrainian merchants to assist local small companies when creating merchandise or purchasing gifts for colleagues and their children.
We also make use of reputable Ukrainian IT firms that continue to hire experts in Ukraine, such as GitLab, Serpstat, and Grammarly.
We exclusively collaborate with trustworthy cloud service and hosting companies, such Microsoft Azure, AWS, Hetzner, and DigitalOcean, to ensure the security and integrity of the data of our clients and staff.
The majority of digital products rely on open-source frameworks and libraries. When incorporating open-source software into our clients’ products, we only select solutions that have been extensively tested, validated, and regularly maintained.
Sustainable Development Goals
Sustainable business development is no longer an abstract and theoretical concept. Businesses that want to be successful understand the need to focus not only on their capital but also their impact on society and environment, which can be indeed tremendous.
For 2024, Redwerk has established five sustainability goals. We’ve achieved decent progress on each of them.
Goal 1: Support NGOs and Ukrainians affected by the war. We are arranging charitable projects and participating in fundraisers held by trusted nonprofits to help relieve the damage inflicted by Russia’s invasion and supply our military with their essential needs.
Goal 2: Upskilling and professional development. To provide high-quality services, we understand that ongoing upskilling is required. This is also important for employees’ professional growth and job satisfaction. In addition to covering the cost of professional literature, courses, and language classes for employees, we also arrange internal meetups and provide a curated list of free and paid tech events every month.
Goal 3: Maintaining work-life balance. We will continue to operate as a remote, distributed team with a flat structure, flexible scheduling, and minimal bureaucracy. This organizational structure has been effective, as 97% of our teammates are happy with their schedules. Our biggest priority is our employees’ physical and mental health, which can be achieved with a balanced workload, quality time with family and friends, physical training, and activities that improve mental health.
Goal 4: Create new job opportunities. Operating a business in wartime is undeniably challenging, but we know that by staying resilient, growing, and paying taxes, we contribute directly to strengthening Ukraine’s economy. Our business creates valuable job opportunities for those who remain in Ukraine.
Learning and Looking Ahead
As we conclude our CSR report, we reflect on a year of progress and look forward to new opportunities.
Committed to sustainability, we’ve balanced social responsibility with growth, ensuring our success benefits communities and the environment. We see AI as a powerful tool to help us solve complex challenges and boost productivity.
Grateful for the support of our clients and partners, we’re excited to expand our sustainability goals. Our focus includes supporting Ukraine’s reconstruction, advancing green energy, and creating more jobs in Ukraine. Embracing innovation and resilience, we aim to make a lasting impact.
