Redandblue’s year 2024

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The year 2024, based on social media for example, was challenging for many, both in personal life and in the workplace. The theme word for the year could be resilience – it was demanded from both company leadership and employees alike.

At the beginning of 2024, we carefully defined our strategy, the methods for its implementation, and the metrics for success. In rapidly changing times, predicting the future has been difficult, but it’s better to have some plan than no plan at all.

Through effective leadership team collaboration, we have been able to operate flexibly, responding to the changing economic conditions and uneven project landscape throughout the year. From the CEO’s perspective, a leadership team that works in a collaborative and positive spirit has been a valuable asset in managing change and making decisions.

Redandbluen johtoryhmä kokoontuu noin kvartaaleittain strategian, myynnin ja muiden aiheiden tiimoilta.

As an entrepreneur, I’m used to working hard and navigating various situations. That’s why the economic downturn and its side effects may not have felt as severe – we’ve simply faced different types of challenges than before. For example, in sales, we’ve had to carefully reassess our competitive factors and have grown significantly, so to speak, out of necessity when projects haven’t landed as they used to.

The year wasn’t bad overall, though: we didn’t reach our planned 30% growth target in revenue, but revenue still grew by 8.5%, and we remained profitable (the financial statements are still in progress).

Many of our strategic goals were achieved; for example, employee satisfaction (eNPS 57) and customer satisfaction (NPS 56) exceeded their targets. We also succeeded in completing planned recruitments, with our growth marketing team expanding to three members and our support team to four specialists.

Redandbluen henkilöstön tyytyväisyyttä kuvaava eNPS-luku oli 57 ja asiakastyytyväisyyttä kuvaava NPS-luku erinomainen 56.
Liikevaihdossa ylitettiin kahden miljoonan rajapyykki ja kasvua viime vuoteen oli 8,5 %.

Work Well-Being Vol. 2

One challenge, classified as a megatrend, is coping at work in the fast-paced environment driven by AI, combined with “leisure-time news” about climate change and wars. In response to this trend, IT giant Gofore announced at the end of the year that it will begin reporting the number of absences caused by mental health issues.

Out of curiosity, I asked our occupational health team about the situation in our company, and it turned out that in 2024, 20% of absences were due to mental health reasons. We will continue to monitor this figure in the coming years, but fundamentally, every percentage is too much.

Since the global trend is on the rise, more attention must be paid to supporting mental well-being in the future. We have provided employees with access to short-term therapy with a low threshold, and we make adjustments such as reducing working hours. We also enable working from abroad, which has been a relief for some during the dark winter months.

In the next Redandblue leadership team meeting (which, by the way, anyone from the staff can join in a guest role), we will discuss how to tackle this challenge even better in our company moving forward.

We performed well on work well-being metrics for 2024, in line with our goals. The pulse score on the Officevibe app, which measures job satisfaction, has been at 7.9/10 throughout the year, and the eNPS was 57 at the end of the year.

Työntekijöiden tyytyväisyyttä ja hyvinvointia kuvaavan Good Vibes -sovelluksen kautta lähetettiin 181 kiitoskorttia työkavereille.

We have increased frontline leadership, and the goal is to further enhance personal interactions with managers through both internally assigned roles and newly recruited team leaders.

One measure of workplace satisfaction could also be that nearly everyone attended both the summer party and the Christmas party. As for workdays, we haven’t forced anyone to work on-site, but there’s a steady flow of both regular and rotating staff at the office every day, and the workstations have been in frequent use, despite the voluntary nature of attendance.

At the Helsinki office, we’ve also seen plenty of retro gaming and office dogs. The company expenses have certainly included a fair amount of receipts for afterwork snacks and drinks. In the afternoons, the TV in the open space sometimes flickers with a pixelated fireplace, and jazz plays through the speakers, setting the mood. As things stand, coming to the office will remain voluntary in the future as well.

Vuoden 2024 pikkujoulujen aktiviteettina toimi pakohuone.
Pikkujoulujen ruokailuna nautittiin viiden ruokalajin illallinen.

Movement

At Redandblue, we’ve had the opportunity to use an hour a week for physical activity for a while now. We made good use of this benefit, totaling 331 hours throughout the year. The most popular activity has been badminton at the Merihaka sports hall, but we’ve also enjoyed floorball, padel, and walking sessions. Office yoga made a comeback, and we launched the Sauna Club, where we visit different saunas around the Helsinki area.

With the ping pong table acquired for the Helsinki office, Redandblue employees now have their own ranking service, which has become extremely popular among the “late-shift” crowd (some even come to the office around 4 p.m. just to play ping pong!).

At the end of the year, we created custom sports socks for the company’s fitness sessions, which might actually be the world’s first accessibility-themed socks.

Pingiskerho kokoontuu toimistolla viikottain joko virallisesti tai spontaanisti.
Aamiaisseminaariin suunnittelimme oman verkkosivujen ekologisuutta selvittävän testin kaikille osallistujille.

Sustainable web services

A major theme throughout 2024 has been the sustainability of online services. At the beginning of the year, we earned two finalist spots in the Grand One’s Most Ecological Web Service category – a great start to the implementation of our responsible strategy. This year, we are excited to be judging said category (go Ykä!).

In the spring, we received the “Koodia Suomesta” carbon neutrality certification, which required calculating the company’s carbon footprint and compensating for emissions. On a project level, we do a lot of measurement and optimization for all the services we build, to ensure that our contribution to digital environmental impact remains as small as possible.

Accessibility has also been a cross-cutting theme in all our work. We launched a total of 16 new services, all of which meet the AA level of accessibility. Compared to last year, the number of published websites is lower, but some of the projects are large in scale and technically demanding. We have also conducted some accessibility audits on external services ourselves.

Examples of larger web service implementations include the Finnish Cultural Foundation’s website, MuniFin (Municipality Finance Plc) web service, Kopiosto’s licensing service, the Lapland University of Applied Sciences’ website, the Moottori digital magazine, and four letter services for the Mannerheim League for Child Welfare.

In terms of technologies, we have made significant strides from just building WordPress websites to developing applications that utilize WordPress as the content management system, but with an application running alongside the site. Examples of this include Kopiosto’s licensing service and MLL’s online letter services, which were built using Vue.

Uusia saavutettavia verkkopalveluita julkaistiin yli 15+ vuonna 2024.

Handovers and support

Throughout the year, we have taken over a large number of websites and e-commerce platforms created by others. The largest of these projects has been the Sitra web services, which we acquired through a public tender win, and we have been actively developing them throughout the fall.

The handovers and the transition of larger projects into the ongoing development phase have allowed us to expand our support team. The goal is to add more experts to the team right at the beginning of the year so that we can maintain the quality of customer service and the security of our services at their current – excellent – level.

Ylläpitomme ratkaisi 704 tikettiä koko vuonna pitäen myös erinomaisesta asiakastyytyväisyydestä huolen.
Ylläpidon asiakastyytyväisyys oli huimat 95 % vuonna 2024.

Last year, we resolved 704 tickets, and the overall average for customer service quality throughout the year is commendable: 95% of customers have been satisfied with the service they received.

In terms of cybersecurity, we provided training for the entire company, and developers also underwent training specifically on the security of software development processes. We appointed a cybersecurity officer and made plans to further improve our data security.

Henkilöstö käytti yhteensä 190 tuntia kouluttautumiseen, osa yrityksen yhteisiä koulutuksia esimerkiksi tietoturvasta ja osa omatoimisia.
331 tuntia käytettiin liikuntaan työajalla, tässä suosituimpia lajeja sulkapallo, pingis sekä etälenkit.

Utilizing AI

There has been a lot of interest from clients in various AI solutions. On a general level, we have aligned that the AI solutions we produce should be in line with optimizing the energy efficiency of websites. The future will show what this will practically mean and what, for example, might be left undone as a result.

During 2024, we implemented a few AI-based solutions for client websites, such as for translation and content generation. GitHub Copilot is being used by all our developers.

The growth marketing team has been leveraging AI tools to support search engine optimization and content creation.

On the design side, AI has been utilized to create stunning images and videos, such as in the Ami Foundation’s social media campaign visuals and Ace Import Group’s brand images. Well-known design tools like Figma and Photoshop have rapidly evolved with AI, streamlining routine tasks and simplifying complex image editing. We’ve been at the forefront of this development, as design work is inevitably going to change in the coming years with the rise of AI.

Yksi Ace Import Groupin uusista brändikuvista.
Ami-säätiön somekampanja NEET-nuorista.

With great momentum into 2025!

There have been no changes in Redandblue’s ownership or board of directors. The board continues with Marko Puumalainen as the chairman, and Teemu Uotila, Reeta, and Petteri Laamo as members.

For 2025, despite the prevailing market conditions, we are aiming for moderate growth and around 10% profitability.

We’ve already calculated our carbon dioxide emissions for 2024, which were 70 tons of CO2. The climate impact of these emissions was offset by supporting a wind power project in India.

Alensimme hiilidioksidipäästöjämme 1,5 % vuoden takaisesta 70 tonniin, mikä kaikki on myös kompensoitu arvojemme mukaisesti.

Right now, we have several job openings and are aiming to fill the positions quickly. Some might say we’re crazy for hiring multiple people in these times, but the years of entrepreneurship have taught us to always act according to the best judgment we have at the moment. The balancing act is always the same—either too little work or too few people.

For next year, we currently have good visibility and exciting projects lined up for the beginning of the year: the website renewals for two museums, a major union’s brand and three website overhauls, the branding for a new industrial area, and the continuation of the Lapland University of Applied Sciences website renewal from last year.

In the early part of the year, we will be publishing new case studies from the private sector – including the brand and website renewals for Pharmia, Hill Audit, and Ace Import Group.

With this energy, we’re in a great position to kick off 2025!

– Reeta

And P.S. If you need a new website, brand, or digital marketing, feel free to reach out to reeta@redandblue.fi or call 044 362 7714.