Redsquid's 2022 Round Up
With another year gone by in a flash, we look back on the year that’s gone. For us at Redsquid, it has been yet another eventful one. A year where we won nothing less than five awards, a year we saw our first apprentices graduate and a year where we launched our first in-house cyber security solution. It’s easy to say we’ve had an adventurous year, so let’s go through all the great things that have happened at Redsquid in 2022!
January
As the very best start to the new year, we welcome three new team members onto our team, setting the tone for a year focused on growth within Redsquid. After years of navigating through lockdowns, our CEO, Sohin, spoke to Comms Dealer about how to navigate through uncertainty and how we make sure to support our customers through changing times. A big part of this was the upcoming ISDN Switch Off, which we spent the month talking about along with the technologies that will overtake legacy solutions and future-proof our customer businesses.
Welcome to a year with a focus on full fibre and collaboration software!
February
In February we announced our charity of the year 2022 as ‘Watford’s Women Centre’. Each year our Charity Committee chooses a charity which will be our focus throughout the year when we aim to raise funds and awareness for their cause. We are proud to Watford Women’s Centre this year as a local charity, and a charity that has been a customer of ours for many many years.
Now we are ready to start our activities for the year, and we already have bake sales, quizzes and a 10 Peak Challenge in the pipeline! As always, Redsquid will match any charity donation pound-for-pound, so we are ready to get started.
March
For many years, we have been a proud technology partner of charities across the UK. Guided by aligned values, we support charities with the technology they need, so they can focus on what they do best – raise awareness and support their chosen causes. Therefore we went to the ‘Fundraising Live and Charity Technology Conference’ in London, where we spent the day getting to know new charities and meeting up with current ones. With the purpose to make a difference, this was a great day for us and we can’t wait to go back again next year.
In March we had the joy of sending our very own Technical Solution Specialist, Tom Seddon, on paternity leave to enjoy some time with his newborn. There’s nothing better than seeing the Redsquid Community grow, and overall we’ve welcomed three new little ones among the team this year!
April
In April we started with #BringYourDaughterToWorkday, where our COO, Vince Mignacca brought his daughter, Sophia to spend the day at Redsquid. Sophia became the day’s honorary member of the Marketing team, where she got to explore a day of creating social media content, video editing and an introduction to PhotoShop. After just one day, it’s safe to say we’d welcome Sophia back at any time!
One of our Corporate Account Managers, Amber Sexton, also reached a very big milestone this month as she completed her Sales Executive Level 4 Apprenticeship. During 2022 we have invested in upskilling our entire team and over 50% of us have been enrolled in degree-level courses. During so, we are making sure we’ll have the skills that our customers will need from us, both today and in the coming years, as we all go through the Digital Transformation.
May
As we go into Spring, we reach the month where we make our donation to the charity we have been supporting from April to April. This time we broke all records and raised £3,500! As always, this was matched by Redsquid, so we donated over £7,000 to the Charity Stargardt’s Connected. This was such an achievement, and we couldn’t be prouder to hand over the massive check to this fantastic charity that has a special place in our hearts as it was started to support the son of one of our team members.
In honour of #mentalhealthawarenessweek, we launched our new Employee Assistance Programme. To continue the focus on our team’s mental wellbeing, we have implemented the resources for the Redsquid community which includes family members, so all have access to remote support from mental health experts.
For the second year in a row, Redsquid is a Carbon Neutral organisation. Since we first became Carbon Neutral in 2021, we have been aiming to further lower our carbon emissions. By changing our internal processes and approach within the operations, we managed to lower our emissions by 5% per employee, perfectly in line with our vision.
May was an eventful month for us, which also set the tone for the rest of the year as we became winners of nothing less than three awards at the 2022 Technology Reseller Awards! First, we went on stage to receive the award for ‘MSP of the Year – an incredible award and a title we have proudly called ourselves for two years in a row. Secondly our CEO, Sohin Raithatha won the Entrepreneur of the Year award, for the amazing achievements he has had and the journey he has taken Redsquid through since starting the company with Vince 16 years ago. Finally, we won the ‘Best Marketing Campaign’ award for the cyber security campaign we ran as we emerged from lockdown to ensure our customers came safely through to the other side.
As the first awards evening of the year – we dare say it couldn’t have ended any better!
June
In June we launched our new concept of Breakfast Mornings, created in line with our team to celebrate what’s happening in our community while educating on subjects which are on our minds. We started off celebrating #PrideMonth, with a focus on diversity and equality. Since then, we have had breakfast morning on our new cyber security solutions, our NPS score and how to create an excellent customer experience, and Excel training.
We also started a new partnership with Zen and kicked it off by creating a new case study together. We filmed our case study with our customer KEITS Training Services, who celebrated their 25th anniversary this year! Together we talked about how they use technology to increase collaboration and efficiency among their team, how they increase staff well-being, and how our solutions have made a difference to them. See all our video case studies here.
Finally, the sun was shining bright and we used the opportunity to create our very own… football league! We quickly found out that there’s nothing like a quick game to get the competitive side out of our colleagues, so watch out for the games next summer – we’re always up for a challenge 😀
July
July was the #bigapprenticeshipmeetup hosted by Investors in People. Our apprentices went along to network, hear success stories and challenges of other apprentices, and participate in soft skill workshops to benefit them throughout their careers. We also welcomed new starters to the Finance team during July, who since have integrated fully into our Redsquid Community.
We then went to the Channel Champions Awards where we were highly commended for the Apprentice Champions award. A great summer day was spent with the team and the wider industry – we already can’t wait until next year. Finally, we ended the month with our Summer All Hands event. Gathering everyone in our headquarters, we talked through upcoming initiatives within Redsquid which will continue to make a difference to our team and customers. Talking through current performance, welcoming new starters, and further focusing on collaboration – we always love a good All Hands! In the middle of the heatwave, we treated the team to an unlimited trip to the ice cream van, joined by all our neighbours.
August
In August we celebrated the anniversary of our 3rd Line Engineer, Daniel Campbell, as he went into nothing else than his 25th year with us! What an achievement. We celebrated with the team, cake and of course presents to mark this great day for both Daniel and Redsquid.
In August we also saw the NHS get compromised by a successful cyber attack, so we spent the month creating cyber security plans for our customers to ensure all have a plan to maintain business continuity through such uncertain times.
September
In September we once again welcomed another two starters onto the team, as Helen and Tiago joined our IT and UC support departments. We love seeing the team grow and integrating new members onto the team along with their experience and innovative ideas. In September we also continued the focus on our cyber security solutions as we kept seeing the attacks against UK businesses go up by the day. The most common attack continues to be Phishing, so to overcome it we have launched our AI anti-phishing software, that’ll reduce and stop the attacks right there and then! Now that’s a technology that makes a difference!
October
October started off with a kick as we launched Redsquid Cyber/Kill, a cyber security solution developed in-house by our experienced team of cyber security specialists.
“By bringing Redsquid Cyber/Kill to market, we are proud to deliver an all-in-one solution that will equip our customers to stay secure from cyber criminals in a challenging landscape. The technology has been in development for 18 months where we have tested and tried it to make sure we deliver a personalised technology that can withstand not just today’s threats, but also the ones we expect to see over the coming years” – CEO Sohin Raithatha
Redsquid Cyber/Kill is designed to be the all-in-one cyber security solution to protect the modern organisation against contemporary threats. As the threat level keeps increasing against organisations in the UK, we’re so pleased we now have delivered a solution that will give our customers piece of mind. Later in the month we went to the Comms Dealer 2022 awards, and were extremely proud to to win the ‘Innovation Award’ as a testament to the innovative solution we have delivered via Cyber/Kill. Well done to the team for what was now 4 award wins in 2022!
In October we also sent our Technical Sales, Emma, to an all paid for trip to Iceland to recognise her for the amazing support she has delivered to our customers and Redsquid this year. Since moving into her new role, Emma has showcased her skills in delivering lots of different kinds of technologies to our customers, which have made them both more efficient, productive, and most importantly – more secure.
Finally, October ended with our annual Redsquid Family Day – a day where we invite our whole community into the office for a day of celebration and spending quality time together. This year, we spent the day celebrating Diwali, to learn about different cultures. We indulged in loads of food, decorated candles, dressed up with face painting and enjoyed a true Bollywood dance performance. Young as old – there was something for everyone, and with a team bigger than ever before, we enjoyed spending the day getting to know all the new members of the Redsquid community.
November
In November the team took on the 42km of London’s Hidden 10 Peaks Challenge, to raise funds and awareness for our charity of the year ‘Watford Women Centre’. So far this has led us to a donation of almost £3000 to the charity which we are looking forward to donating next year.
In the Summer we enrolled our management team in leadership training in an effort to continue to build a strong team while also ensuring individual success. Together they have been exploring tools and creating strategies with a focus on employee well-being, performance and skills development so we can make sure Redsquid continue to grow in the coming years.
Finally, our football-enthused team enjoyed a month with World Cup games on the screens, and theme days centred around the celebration of teamwork and a beautiful game. We’ve participated in quizzes, pizza days, sweepstakes and all the other things that go along with the World Cup – so now that it’s over we’re ready to replace all that with the festive season.
December
We’re now at the last month of the year and what a year it’s been.
We went to the early Gamma Christmas party where we were surprised with the ‘Marketing Team of the Year’ award. A Wonderful surprise that took us to an overall five award wins in 2022! A groundbreaking record of which we are incredibly proud.
The last few weeks we spend with the team, the office is decorated, the music is on, and it’s starting to smell like Christmas in here. This year, we invited the team to a festive lunch, with a turkey roast and everything that goes with it. In the true Redsquid style, we enjoyed the day with a live band and entertainment from our favourite magician.
We hope you found our ‘Redsquid’s 2022 Round up’ insightful and exciting, I know we definitely did.
From all of us here at Redsquid – We wish all of you a very Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!