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While the whole world returns to the office, they are building a remote company

The guest of the episode — Ruslan Sarvarov, Head of People at the Qatari IT company QIC, manages a team of 250 people spread across 20 countries. In a region where the concept of "remote work" practically does not exist, his team not only survives but sets new standards. In this interview, Ruslan talks about how he "fights back" against the pressure to return everyone to the office, why benefits are retention marketing, and how to find one talent among a thousand applications in a fiercely competitive environment.

Ruslan has been working at QIC for three years. In the first months, he mainly focused on hiring, but now his mission encompasses everything related to people. Today, as Head of People, Ruslan is responsible for the HR block in his department, which employs about 250 staff: developers, designers, testers, analysts, and data specialists.

The company's headquarters is located in Doha, where the main management is concentrated. Although QIC has offices in other countries, the IT team works predominantly remotely. Its geography is very extensive — employees live in more than 20 countries.

Before joining QIC, Ruslan had already worked in remote companies and saw that they could fully exist in this format. The expert notes that such a company usually has a small office for rare meetings. Ruslan drew this concept from the book "Remote: Office Not Required," which explains the principles of building remote work in detail. Many of these tips he began to systematically implement at QIC as a ready-made methodology.

For Qatar, this approach became a unique experience, as remote work is not practiced there. Initially, few believed in the success of this case due to the large number of countries and time zones that needed to be covered.

As Ruslan explains, the global trend today is a return to the office: only 10–12% of companies have maintained a fully remote format, while about 88% have returned employees to their desks.

However, for top-tier IT specialists, the ability to work remotely remains a key advantage. It provides freedom from being tied to a specific city or country, which becomes a powerful tool for attracting the best candidates in the global market.

The flip side is the challenges of engagement and cohesion. The selection criteria at QIC are high: they hire senior engineers with experience in Europe and the CIS who want to test their skills in the Middle East. "These are people with established professional opinions," notes the expert. "Assembling a cohesive team from them in a remote format is a real challenge."

To build a team at QIC, they use a classic model that includes four stages:

In the context of the general trend towards returning to the office, the temptation to send all employees back is great, especially for top managers. "We have to fight against this," says Ruslan. "From a business perspective, remote work is a broader hiring funnel and adaptation across regions through micro-communities."

Another critically important aspect is accepting cultural differences and the constant likelihood of force majeure. "In one country — an earthquake, in another — a technical failure, in a third — a public holiday. You face this constantly, and you need to be prepared for it."

One of the top priorities became building internal communication. Since the adaptation period in a remote format is quite long, it took about a year and a half to create a full-fledged environment for knowledge sharing and employee engagement."

It helped that many 'digital nomad' employees concentrate in certain locations," shares Ruslan. "For example, in Spain, Georgia, Poland, or Bali (Indonesia). We realized that to simultaneously strengthen the external brand and unite people, it is necessary to hold offline events."

"Employees are like customers: you constantly offer them new 'products' and conditions to keep them with the company," says Ruslan. When he joined QIC, there was a no-benefit policy. Ruslan began to gradually change it. They started with the basics — things that relate more to the culture of work-life balance than to bonuses: sick days, paid vacations, maternity leave.

Every three to four months, something new was added. It was important for people to feel cared for and to understand that the company could pleasantly surprise them.There is a result, although it is not instantaneous. "When I started, the eNPS metric was 7.7, and now it is 8.6. It hasn't skyrocketed to ten, but it has grown steadily with slight fluctuations. This confirms that implementing benefits is a painstaking job, but it definitely pays off."

According to internal surveys and research at QIC, employees value health care and a sense of security the most. In response to this request, the company is primarily developing health insurance, including travel insurance.

For a team of nomads, selecting insurance became a special task — a policy that works worldwide is expensive. Despite this, the company managed to find and gradually implement such a solution. This step had a significant positive effect: it strengthened employees' confidence that the company would not leave them in a difficult situation. According to Ruslan, this affects retention 100% and helps shape a holistic employer brand (EVP).

Among other significant benefits, he notes:

Ruslan emphasizes an important detail: people need to be regularly reminded of existing benefits, especially those with expiration dates.

According to Ruslan, competition in Qatar's IT sector is exceptionally high. If in the CIS, a vacancy receives 100–200 applications, here it is about a thousand. The main hiring channel in such conditions is networking, as "cold" applications almost never work.

The second most important channel is LinkedIn, followed by referrals from events.The situation with the remote format is similar: even experienced specialists from large companies may need up to six months to find a suitable position without lowering their salary or status.

Intense competition, however, does not reduce candidates' demands for benefits and salary. Instead, applicants are willing to reconsider their ambitions regarding the position. In the international market, their experience is often overvalued: "in local IT, a high title indicates that a person is a significant figure in the industry. And in five years, it is unlikely that a person can reach that title. In the CIS, it is common to jump over such titles in five years."

As a result, companies have to show flexibility. When 5–6 strong candidates reach the final stage, hard bargaining over conditions can lead to losing the best one and having to start the search anew.

It is very easy to lose a talented employee, and automation in hiring has not become a panacea in this regard. The myth that AI will screen and hire the best is far from reality.

In Qatar, one vacancy can receive thousands of applications. It is impossible to review them all — recruiters often have to take the first 200-300 and form a shortlist. Existing systems (ATS) do not always have auto-scoring functions, and where they do exist, they do not work perfectly.

Ruslan's team is developing the HR Tech direction, testing their own screening solutions, especially for junior positions. This is strategically important for two reasons:

Many companies, fearing thousands of applications, do not publish vacancies at all, working only through networking. The main pain point is not screening, but quality rejections.

"All ITS and CRMs should focus not on mass mailing template letters from AI, but on how to respectfully and personally reject candidates," insists Ruslan. "You will hire one out of three thousand, and 2990 people should leave with constructive feedback. That is where artificial intelligence would be truly useful."

The remote format, on one hand, simplifies parting for both sides. On the other hand, it contributes to the phenomenon of "quiet quitting," where an employee is formally on the payroll but is not actually working. According to Ruslan's observations, there are several main reasons for turnover in remote mode:

Initially, the company had a classic funnel: technical interview, HR interview, test task, and final interview with the manager. Over time, they added a separate stage — culture fit interview with future colleagues (usually 3-4 people).

The probation period with key checkpoints is conducted at two weeks, one and a half months, and two and a half months. "At these moments, we collect mini-reviews (mini-360) about the newcomer."

As a result, the percentage of successful probation completion in the company is about 89-91%. Most people pass it. Those who do not usually turn out to be simply unprepared for remote work. This is difficult to verify in an interview — you can only understand whether a person will be productive in this format after starting to work with them, says Ruslan.