Ky Nichol, Cutover CEO:
We at Cutover stand with Ukraine. We deplore acts of violence and war wherever they happen in the world, but today we underline our support for the Ukrainian people and reaffirm our desire to stand in solidarity with all those who are striving for peace around the world.
We understand that we do not have a magic wand to wave in terrible circumstances like this: short-term, one-off actions and slogans feel like a drop in the ocean when faced with an unfolding humanitarian crisis and unthinkable acts of violence. Equally, we are mindful that armed conflicts are ravaging communities around the world, and much further beyond Europe.
I am keen to highlight initial actions that we have been taking internally and externally at Cutover to use our position of privilege to help those affected by the conflict, mass displacement, and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.
I have been inspired to see other businesses - big and small alike - mobilizing and pulling together during the past fortnight to use their people, resources, and skills for the greater good. Their actions have helped shape our response to the crisis, and I hope our efforts will do the same. We can all learn from each other in order to create the best possible support system for the Ukrainian people.
We’ve provided more information below about our programs. If you want to learn more about how we’ve set up the “back-end” of these initiatives or have suggestions on what more we could do to help, please do reach out.
Connecting displaced Ukrainians with employment opportunities at Cutover.
- All of our job vacancies are open to Ukrainian applicants, but as a software scale-up company, we know that the Ukrainian software engineering talent pool is one of the best on the planet. We’ve opened a separate ‘fast-track’ Software Engineering role specifically for displaced Ukrainian engineers.
- We commit to providing visa assistance for Ukrainian applicants and their families, in addition to paying for travel to the UK, two months of accommodation to get them set up, and English language tuition if required.
- We understand that the majority of displaced Ukrainians will wish to return to their homeland when it is safe to do so. We feel it is important not to contribute to a longer-term brain drain in Ukraine, so we wish to offer Ukrainian employees a favorable option to return home when the time is right. While we cannot currently offer remote employment in Ukraine, we will offer a “re-relocation” package of a similar financial value to our relocation packages to employees who join us under this ‘fast-track’ program who feel ready to return home in the future.
Helping displaced Ukrainians gain access to employment opportunities outside of Cutover.
- We understand that the skill sets required for our job vacancies at Cutover are very specific and specialist in nature, which by definition excludes a large majority of those displaced by the conflict who may be seeking relocation and employment.
- We commit to using the in-house skills of our Talent Team at Cutover to make a difference to those who are not eligible candidates for our current vacancies.
- Our Talent Team is offering free CV/Resume advice and editing services to anyone displaced by the conflict who is pursuing employment in English-speaking countries (or anglophone companies elsewhere). We encourage anyone whom this might help to get in touch with the Talent Team via talent-team@cutover.com.
Offering our employees the opportunity to reallocate some of their learning budget to provide short-term financial aid.
- Cutovians receive a budget of £25 per month for their self-driven learning (via our partners at Learnerbly).
- We’ve offered our team the chance to “opt-in” to have March’s learning budget reallocated to be donated to the Disasters Emergency Committee’s Ukraine Appeal.
- Cutover will match all funds employees choose to reallocate.
To Ukrainians reading this: we stand with you and will do what we can to support you during these dark days.
To our friends in the global technology company ecosystem, please let us know how we can support and share the initiatives you have launched to provide much-needed support to those impacted by this crisis. This is not about company versus company one-upmanship; this is about using our collective privilege to take humanitarian action in desperate times.
If you want to contribute further, UNICEF is collecting donations to protect children in Ukraine.