Bokeh of sevenish light sources. Photo: Mandrila

Values of a great work culture.

In April 2021, I joined ThoughtWorks as an experience design consultant. The keywords that popped up from my initial research about the organisation were ‘nice people’, ‘intelligent people’, ‘lot of learning’, ‘average tenure 7–10 years’, ‘rank no. 2 in toughest job interviews list’, ‘approve your own leaves’. In the fear of being biased by new-job-enthusiasm, I gave myself some time to contemplate how this organisation truly practices what it preaches and how a great work culture is an integral part of the value offering to customers.

Here is a checklist, in my view, that describe the key indicators of a great place to work.

1. Celebrate the work, and life in general, not a leader or a strategically important individual. It’s never one (two or even three) person and everyone knows that. Instead convey the delivery and growth story and share how people got together to make something happen. In ThoughtWorks, there are ‘Go Live’ and ‘Go Wrong’ emails/articles shared across the organisation that succinctly describes new releases and learnings of where a project went wrong. This is also one of the practical on-the-job learning avenues from projects with which one may not be directly involved with. There are so many interaction avenues among people across the organisation that one is bound to say “you too?!” at least twice a month.
2. Express the difficulty of the situation or constraint and avoid mapping it to an individual. In many organisations people are too quick in finding faults with team members and then it becomes a matter of who complained first to the manager. Oftentimes the vertical hierarchy puts those on top in a soup. This also permeates from our educational culture where it’s encouraged to complain to a higher authority rather than instilling a habit of empathy and collective learning in pupils. The question one should ask oneself before pointing to an individual is ‘have I understood the person/ situation well?’, ‘am I responding in a way other’s have responded in my past experience?’, ‘what can I do to alleviate the blocker?’, ‘do I see the other person as my competition?’. These are difficult questions to ask oneself but it’s the foundation of a great culture – in the self.
3. Inclusiveness is being neutral about the difference. Historically, since there has been deliberation in exclusion it’s important to be deliberate about inclusion now, with the hope that what is considered taboo will eventually become normalised. Inclusivity isn’t about calling out the difference and showing how tolerant and accommodating we have been in accepting it; it’s about truly respecting the difference and overcoming our personal boundaries that have blinded us.
4. Halt reward systems based on long working hours. When such inefficiency gets awarded verbally or financially or otherwise, it’s shakes the very core of the organisation. It causes people to procrastinate and waste time on what we call ‘office politics’. Appreciations should be quick and in-situ from immediate stakeholders, as feedback enables quick corrections and a higher quality of outcome which is the true reward compared to strategic advertorial award systems that are not only hollow but myopic too.
5. Foster an environment for everyone to share knowledge. As you never really know from where and who inspiration will come, the traditional mindset of seniors training juniors needs to be done away with. In ThoughtWorks, true growth of each employee is fostered by a system called ‘the trio’ – comprising the ThoughtWorker, their chosen tenured guide placed anywhere in the organisation and an assigned success catalyst from the current project. The names clearly suggests their roles and an individual can be all three of them. The progress is formally documented and tracked with a goal of self excellence for all the roles of the trio and not for performance grading. This seems to be working well as the mindset here is to pull each other up, remove obstacles and celebrate each other at a global context. The math is too simple, excellent employees equals excellent organisation.
6. Avoid gender-biased questions to candidates during job interviews or later. The perception about a company’s culture begins right at the first contact with the recruiter. It’s not cool to ask female candidates if they are married or have children to gauge their work commitment, it’s also not cool to ask about their spouse’s work profile for whatever reasons. On being asked by some recruiters, my first thought was whether they would ask the same to a candidate of another gender. ThoughtWorks has an impressive interview process where candidates get a first hand experience of how it would feel to actually work in the organisation. The interviewers plan out a detailed role-play session and look out for minute cues in the candidate when confronted with challenges. They are considerate enough to demonstrate during the interview, how they work in a team and how the candidate can fit in the role. One particularly notable interview stage is the social impact round where they evaluate a candidate’s outlook and sensitivity to society. I was asked questions from my earliest job experience as a fashion designer and how the industry impacts gender divide and socio-economic status. Till date I have struggled to convince this effectively to many industry seniors and recruiters why my experience in fashion shouldn’t be truncated from my overall work experience, how the job experiences in fashion and tech innovation are related and independent of the job title… and here I was with a team of interviewers who studied my prior work and was prepared to accept my whole experience. Sounds like true love.
7. Grow active micro-communities. Most fun organisations have multiple communities of people with similar interests. Enough resources are allocated to encourage cross-team events that creates a togetherness and a co-learning experience not limited by billable projects but allowing spontaneous ideas to emerge that people are passionate to work on.

Work culture is not what the people and culture team explain to their employees; it’s how employees describe their office to their close friends and family.