Reflections of COVID-19 Impact on One of Georgia’s Largest Employers – Evolution Georgia
INTERVIEW
The outbreak of the COVID-19 virus is challenging economies and businesses throughout the world. And it is probably fair to assume that we will be talking about a before and an after the corona pandemic. “The world will never be the same again” is not an unusual statement in public debate these days. How are large businesses coping with their new reality? What are their crisis management plans? And how do they see their future in Georgia ‘after Corona’?
GEORGIA TODAY interviewed the local business head of one of the largest companies in the Georgian market - Jacob Claesson, Head of Operations, Evolution Georgia, about his view of the situation.
Evolution operates in several countries, including Georgia. It entered the Georgian market in 2018. Tell us about the journey so far and the company’s plans in Georgia.
Evolution Georgia is part of Evolution Gaming Group AB, founded in 2006 and stock-listed on Nasdaq Nordic. Our core is to develop and deliver product software for online gaming and run our broadcast studios, which are like giant TV-studios, where our people lead the game in front of cameras 24/7/365. We operate business-2-business only. Across our 14 sites, we have about 6500 people working in the fields of Game Presenters, Game Development, Software Engineering, Property Management, Technical Development as well as people and administrative support services. We have won multiple international industry awards, including the most prominent award of our industry, ‘Live Casino Supplier of the Year’ for 10 consecutive years at the EGR Awards.
We opened our state-of-the-art broadcasting studio in Tbilisi in March, 2018. It was set for rapid growth in size from the start to meet the growing demand for our services worldwide. The choice of Tbilisi, Georgia, for our third large studio was based on the understanding that the country can offer a stable environment for companies and that there is access to ambitious and English-speaking youth, who are eager to start their career in an international, intercultural environment.
Before the Georgian authorities ordered a halt to our operations in our Tbilisi broadcasting studio at the end of March of 2020, Evolution Georgia employed more than 3300 people. Our intention was to keep growing our Tbilisi site, providing jobs and career opportunities as one of the major employers in Georgia. Unfortunately, with the limits imposed on our scale of operations by the local authorities, we have been forced to adapt to the current local context and limit our growth plans for our Tbilisi studio for 2020.
The dramatic spread of COVID-19 has disrupted lives, livelihoods, communities and businesses worldwide. How is it affecting Evolution Georgia?
The effects from COVID-19 are of course felt by everyone, including us. It is an unpredictable and sad situation which brings huge stress both on societies and on individuals.
From our perspective, we have kept focusing on two things. The safety of our people always comes first. We have changed many routines in how we operate to comply with the recommendations from global health organizations and the local authorities in the countries where we operate, and this is particularly true for Georgia where the local restrictions have been very strict. All of our people who do not have to be in the workplace to do their job are working from home and our studio is segmented to ensure that it can operate as smaller units to comply with limitations to the number of people allowed in one place at one time. Furthermore, we have multiple new processes for those required to be at work, as well as a lot of additional cleaning and hygiene procedures.
This is an unprecedented scenario, and it is hard to predict the full outcome of it for the world. No-one can know exactly how this situation will impact Georgia long-term, but everyone can see that the impact on the Georgian society will be large. The measures taken by the Georgian government to almost completely shut down the local economy are bound to have a very negative impact on the unemployment rate in Georgia, as well as on the perception of Georgia as a business-friendly country.
This leads us to our second priority. We believe that aside from creating a safe workplace for our people, it is also our responsibility to keep our studio in operation so that we are able to offer jobs to those who want to earn an income. We are pleased to now be back in operation since early April, but the limitation to our allowed operational scale means that we have had to revise our plan for Georgia for this year. Our other studios have been covering the bulk of our customer needs since our operations were limited in Georgia and we now no longer have the same ambitious growth plans here.
At this point we continue our dialogue with the Georgian government, and we hope that soon we will be permitted to increase our operations and allow additional Georgian team members the opportunity to earn an income. We believe that the care for those who are sick with coronavirus in Georgia will require that all members of society do their part. The way that we want to support Georgia is by offering a workplace with a lot of safety measures in place, and, through this, offering jobs to the Georgian youth in a controlled environment.
Evolution had big plans of creating job opportunities for youth in Georgia, but now it is changed. What is the main reason behind that and what are the new plans of the company in Georgia?
We have broadcasting studios in 8 countries. In 7 of these, the restrictions from the respective local authorities allow us to keep running in a way that both attempts to hinder further spread of COVID-19, but that also preserves work opportunities. Georgia is the only country where we have been forced to this level of limited capacity in comparison to normal. While we respect that each country deals with a different local context for their decision-making, it is not clear for us why the Georgian government does not do more to preserve job opportunities for its citizens. By moving to more targeted restrictions, the Georgian economy might not be hit as hard and the country will stand better prepared when it goes to recover from the consequences of COVID-19.
We continue to see a strong demand for our services, so the only thing holding us back for opening up for more people to come work in the controlled environment that we have created in our Tbilisi studio, is the limitations to our scale of operations put in place by the local authorities. At this stage, it is clear that our planned growth for 2020 will not happen as we thought in Georgia and unfortunately for Georgia and our operations here, we might have to consider other options for expansion in countries where we are permitted to operate if the existing limitations to our operations continues. It is still our hope that the Government of Georgia will adjust its approach to be more targeted in terms of the restrictions to move towards a realization that healthy businesses and fighting the COVID-19 virus can and must go hand in hand for any country that wishes to be prosperous.
What are the main challenges at this point?
Evolution Georgia falls under the exempt business sectors set out by the Government of Georgia, which are allowed to operate at a limited capacity. What we would have liked to see is a better dialogue between the government and the business sector in the country on how we can keep companies operating, while at the same time fight the further spread of the virus. Several of the measures that are implemented in Georgia are very general and broad, which means that their direct impact on the virus spread is unclear, but their impact on business and the economy is very noticeable and negative. Key for both the short and the long term perspective would be to find the balance between keeping the economy going and fighting the virus at the same time. We are standing by 24/7 to work with the government on this. I would expect any other larger companies here to be ready to do the same.
What have you done to ensure the safety of your employees and where do you see your role within this process?
Since the first reports of the spread of the COVID-19 virus and as the World Health Organization started issuing recommendations for how companies could help in the fight, we have implemented multiple preventive efforts to keep our people safe. These include travel bans and mandatory travel quarantine, remote work for all roles possible, thermo screening before entering our buildings, additional cleaning and hygiene efforts, as well as changes to several work processes to ensure limitations to gatherings of people, and social distancing.
On March 23, the floor operations within Evolution Georgia were shut down by the Georgian authorities. As a result, we could not offer our team members any shifts, and about 3000 Game Presenters (who are leading the games) and Shufflers (who are preparing the cards) were suspended.
Since the shutdown, Evolution has added additional preventive measures, including separation of our buildings into smaller zones where staff cannot interact with each other during their shift, and offering paid transportation to and from work.
On April 4, we were allowed to reopen our studio, but despite our efforts, we are still only allowed to operate at limited capacity, leaving almost all of our team members without the opportunity for work and income. We have been very clear that we are ready to do more if it will allow us to increase our level of operations. We are convinced that if the government came to inspect our premises, we could agree on a way to bring more of our people back to work in our controlled environment. As a large company in Georgia, we believe that we have a great role to play in leading the way on how businesses can adapt to the current situation. We strongly believe that with the right decisions, we can both fight the virus now, but also help the Georgian economy more in the long term.
How would you evaluate the disruptions to the economy as a challenge of the preventive measures taken by the government?
The impact of the coronavirus is rippling through Georgian economy, but it might take a few months to see the full picture and its full impact on the Georgian society. The situation is still developing. However, there are some things which are evident already: many businesses are going bankrupt or closing, and people are losing their jobs. That said, I still think that if the Georgian government urgently look at increasing the precision in their decisions, the road to financial recovery for Georgia can be shortened.
Do you think that Evolution might leave the Georgian market?
We have until now only had positive things to say about the business climate in Georgia. We have great people in our Georgian teams and we have invested a lot in our premises here, and we do not want to change our plans for Georgia. Unfortunately, there is room for improvement from the government side in terms of the current precision of targeted effects of decisions. If we are kept at limited capacity in terms of operations over time, we will have to consider other locations for growth.