Competence fuels innovation

Visma Labs kicked off on January 22nd, and just a few months later, on May 10th, our fantastic Managing Director, Iveta, hopped on board! Her incredible leadership has truly steered our ship over the past decade. Back then, we shared an office with Visma Consulting, feeling a bit like their younger sibling in the same building.

This year was a whirlwind of exciting recruitment challenges and tons of open positions! We went on a quest for super unique skills that weren't easy to find in Latvia and successfully brought in amazing talent from abroad. We even rolled out the red carpet, providing full relocation support and residence permits! This year also marked the start of our awesome internship program, with Valters being one of our very first two interns—and guess what? He's still rocking it at Visma Labs today!

After our first interns totally crushed it, we launched our very own bootcamp program! And get this, three of our colleagues from 2016—Roberts, Dagne, and Mairis—are still growing with us, like little seedlings that blossomed into strong plants! We hit a huge milestone, celebrating 100 employees by releasing 100 balloons from the 14th-floor terrace of our brand-new office, Place 11, which we moved into around Līgo. Finally, having our own space felt like coming home! Iveta was super on top of things, asking for feedback on the new office and making sure everything, even that much-needed coffee machine, got sorted. This year also saw our Swedish-speaking support teams come to life, and we officially started our yearly tradition of running in the Marathon!

Previous year we had a mountain of work because - boom! We proudly reached 200 employees! Also, that year we started a Latvian language club for our foreign colleagues to chat and practice their skills. And in 2019 we threw our very first Visma Kids Day, where kids got to see where their parents worked and play with cool robotic toys. Our Summer Teambuilding event at Zaķusala was an absolute blast!

The year kicked off with so much promise, but after three months, COVID-19 sent us all packing to work from home. This unexpected twist sparked our first-ever well-being marathon, a brilliant idea from our colleagues to help everyone stay sane during crazy times. The "Catch the Spring" walking challenge took off like wildfire, with everyone enthusiastically walking so much that we quickly surpassed our first goal of walking around Latvia! Then, we set our sights even higher: reaching our Oslo headquarters by land. Our first online Christmas celebration was a hit, with a creative activity for the kids and a lively game of "Cietie Rieksti" (Hard Nuts) for everyone. We also launched our "Dinner with Visma Chef" cooking show, where colleagues shared their favorite recipes on online calls, and we all cooked together from our own kitchens!

The awesome ChariTeam was born as an initiative from both employees and management to brainstorm and bring to life amazing ways to give back to society, encouraging everyone to join in! The FunSquad also made its debut this year, dedicated to making office life more exciting by organizing all sorts of events and games for our colleagues. And get this: 2021 was our biggest recruitment year ever, with a whopping 104 new employees joining our Visma family!

The ChariTeam heroically shifted its focus to helping Ukraine, diving into everything from fundraising and volunteering to sorting donated goods, making trench candles, and even handing out warm soup to new arrivals. This year also brought a special visit from our CEO Merete on September 16th!

We put a big spotlight on developing diverse tech skills, which led to the birth of AHA! Week. What started as a cool internal idea got so much love from our IT department that it's now a fantastic event organized across all our competence centers! We proudly earned the "Family Friendly Workplace" status, setting up a super fun kids' corner packed with toys and games for little visitors.

Visma Labs is absolutely crushing it, continuing to learn and grow in the exciting world of AI! We're always keeping up with the latest trends and planning even more internal education on this hot topic. This year, we launched the "Knowledge Lab" forum, a fantastic platform where colleagues from any field can sign up and share their smarts with everyone. And to top it off, our CTO Alexander Lystad even visited us in Latvia, hosting an awesome conference about AI and its future, complete with real-world examples of how it's already working wonders!