As each year approaches its end, some of us usually get mixed feelings. Simultaneously, we get a feeling of relief (”glad that’s behind me!”), and we feel anxiety (“am I forgetting anything??”). In this sense, the end of the year seemed like the perfect time to reflect. We looked in the rearview mirror, we gathered the data and listened to what it said about our performance numbers in 2022. We counted all the individual hours invested in activities other than work. What we saw was even more amazing than what we’d imagined. The numbers we ended up with are a testament to the effort every one of us at Polar Cape has invested in our team. We are proud to share our time at work with such amazing individuals who selflessly put their hearts into everything they do.
Without further delays, here’s a review of 2022, a year at Polar Cape in numbers.
The NEW and OLD in 2022
For starters, the NEW in 2022 were our 46 new teammates who joined us during the year. We gained 10 new clients. We built one new Polar Cape website. We opened one brand new office in Bitola. We moved into a new office space in Skopje. We kicked off a new type of company event – the Polar Cape Summits, both in Macedonia and Sweden!
There are a few amazing old things to brag about in 2022 as well. For example, 12 of our employees celebrated special milestones in the company during 2022. 10 employees reached the 5-year mark, and 2 had their 10-year anniversaries! Congratulations to: Veronica Thunholm, Iskra Ilikj, Ivana Gligorovska, Rahilka Simonova, Sofre Garevski, Aleko Markovski, Martin Simonovski, Risto Kavalinovski, Aleksandar Arnaudov on the amazing 5 years they gave and even bigger kudos to Jörgen Blomberg and Dragan Miladinoski. Each of their years have been a precious contribution to Polar Cape’s growth and we truly thank them for their dedication and hard work.
Learning & Development in 2022
Well, this was a real surprise for us all! We were aware we were nerds, but not to this extent. The total hours invested in spreading and consuming knowledge are (drum roll, please) 5011 hours invested by all of us, and 52 months total by the 8 people in our graduate and acceleration programs.
To be more precise, we spent 2062 hours in internal knowledge sharing. This includes the 103 sessions of tech and soft skills forums with 1397 hours and the Internal Polar Talks, Summit presentations, etc. On top of that that we invested 2609 hours in competence building – 52 Academy sessions, Domain individual trainings, internal trainings, English courses, Swedish courses, etc.
Besides sharing knowledge within the team, we shared it with external audiences for a total of 340 hours during sessions such as our Polar Talks, Eureka sessions, and student presentations.
At Polar Cape, people are everything. When we grow, Polar Cape grows. We would like to thank all our Polar Capers for every minute they took out of their busy days to make Polar Cape better in 2022. Let’s hope we keep up the knowledge sharing spirit in 2023 as well.
Don’t Think We Forgot to Have Fun in 2022
Of course, every moment spent with this amazing team at Polar Cape is fun, but do you think that after almost 2 years of restricted partying because of the pandemic we wouldn’t make up for lost hours?
All in all, we invested countless hours in having FUN! 507 attendees enjoyed 3 parties, 2 after-work gatherings, one wine tasting outing, one Christmas dinner, and many other celebrations over 5 locations: Stockholm, Skopje, Bitola, Mavrovo, and Kavadarci!
Another 225 attendees enjoyed 549 hours of some extreme and some not that extreme, but still very fun activities such as adrenalin park, carting, stand-up comedy, extreme sauna, extreme ice bathing, escape room, on-air quizzes, midsummer boat cruising, ATV rides, pentathlon, and more!
Sports We Did in 2022
No surprise here: we like to move, and move we did. How did we move, you ask?
We exercised in different gyms, hiked, ran, skied and snowboarded, kayaked, biked, paddle boarded, played football and basketball. We moved for 1014 hours. Our gym time totaled to about 650 hours, and we ran approximately 204 km in 3 locations: Stockholm, Skopje, and Ohrid.
If you’ve been following our social media, you would know that our Macedonian Polar Cape football and basketball teams took part in the local IT League. There we ended up playing 21 games of football and 15 basketball matches.
Travel in 2022
2022 brought us back together and that resulted in a lot of packing suitcases (and losing suitcases) on our way to see our colleagues and clients.
We had 43 visits to Sweden and Norway and 17 visits to Macedonia over this year, and we cherished every moment together.
Corporate Responsibility in 2022
2022 was a giving year at Polar Cape. As each year before, we continued to give back to the community. We had 5 separate donating events for different organizations or individuals in need.
One number which kind of stands out is the 51 hours we spent planting trees, which resulted in 1600 new trees during the year.
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Exciting, huh? Cheers to an even better 2023! Happy Holidays everyone.
