How Aliz reacted to Hungarian inflation

Back when the founders of Aliz were thinking about starting a company, they already knew they wanted to create something different. They envisioned an environment where people think and act as a community.

Since then, Aliz has been building a culture where honesty, consistency, and transparency are not just buzzwords but are valued in all areas. The company’s management shares all relevant information about Aliz with the team - not only its successes but the difficulties as well. We cultivate an open atmosphere where everyone can express their opinion, and in the case of major changes, management often proactively asks us to do so.

When challenges come from the outside, thinking as a team can be even more crucial. This was the case with the Covid pandemic which has had a huge impact on the global economy. But our strong commitments to each other enabled us to deal with the crisis and end up even stronger, both financially and team-wise.

Today, insecurities are quite high again due to external factors. With Hungarian inflation accelerating, uncertainties have arisen among our colleagues as well. We all ask the same questions ourselves. How will I manage my everyday life in this situation? Should I worry about my future or just wait a bit longer? Uncertainty is probably the hardest thing to deal with as stress might cause us to lose our balance and focus. To avoid this chain reaction, the management decided to act. But instead of coming up with an Aliz policy by themselves, they consulted the team, honestly and openly. 

We organized two discussions in a completely open format where everyone had the chance to speak about their thoughts and feelings and share their opinions freely. The management hadn’t outlined a pre-agreed proposal on how to handle inflation; instead, they wanted to pick our brains. It turned out that most of us needed a shared place to express our feelings and to be reassured that we are  thinking and acting as a community and that we will handle this situation as a community.

Everyone agreed that the solution should ensure the stability of the company. We had to make sure that the value of our salaries is not inflated as we need to keep everyone’s job safe. In the end, we came to a similar solution to the one we had during the Covid crisis.

Our annual salary review is in February with salaries effective from March every year. From August, we have considered the originally determined salaries only as base salaries and started to generate a bonus pool as well. The amount of bonus is depending on the extent of the inflation. It was part of the open conversations how we could measure the value change of our salaries in the most accurate way since different inflation KPIs calculate with different shopping baskets. Eventually, we took into account the EUR/HUF exchange rate in our formula as well. At the end of the year, if Aliz is financially stable, the bonus pool will be paid out. Everyone agreed to this knowing that together we can operate as a responsible company while not jeopardizing our financial stability for a minute.

We love that Aliz is a place where stability meets adaptivity. It’s in our DNA to try out new things, and quickly iterate. If you feel you’d be a great member of our community check out our career page and be part of our success story.