GPTW Japan
Hello! I’ve been thinking what to write and this time I’d like to share about what makes Atrae a great place to work. One of our humble achievements earlier this year is that in February, Great Place To Work Institute Japan held its awards ceremony of best places to work for the year 2017.
Thankfully, we made it to Top 3 in the category of companies with less than 100 employees!
Sure I felt proud and happy when I learned about the result however it wasn’t something the CEO had expected. Indeed, setting the bar higher is great but looking on the bright side, there’s always a room for improvement for us.
So what makes a great workplace? While there are several factors to consider, let me narrow down a couple of things about what I think makes Atrae a great place to work.
It’s not because we can goof around here…
Nor because of this spot…
On a serious note, one thing that I think makes Atrae a great workplace is the trust that’s given to us. It might sound cliche but it means a lot. We are trusted that we can perform and do well with minimal supervision in the office. I’m truly amazed by this especially in my first few months of working here.
It means that we are treated as adults, adults who are responsible enough to manage our own tasks at our own working style and at our own pace. It’s about being given the autonomy to perform on our own, hence makes us feel a sense of responsibility.
And through this we feel more engaged, more motivated to give valuable contributions to the company. I believe that autonomy is very much correlated with employee engagement.
This employee engagement is apparently one of the factors that make a great work place. Because who wants to work with teams that are not fully engaged? So that’s why trust is truly significant, without it, employee autonomy won’t be attained. That’s one.
Another is that we, in Atrae are given a fair treatment. Yes! Each and every one is treated fairly. Aside from the fact that we’re a flat organization, I, as a non- Japanese member have never felt out of place nor have been racially discriminated at the workplace.
In fact, we’re embracing diversity since there will be more non- Japanese members who will join the team in the future. So we don’t distinguish ethnicities here. I thought it’s really nice.
The last one is leadership. I may have mentioned in one of my previous blogs how leadership is greatly encouraged and emphasized here in Atrae. Our boss always reminds us about how we are leaders on our own, or at least have the mind of one. Now this reminds me of Jim Collins, the author of “ Good to Great” mentioned the kind of leadership regarded as a common characteristics of great companies.
We can go on and on about other factors like vision and job satisfaction but for now, those are three traits Atrae possesses that I regard as a great place to work.
In a nutshell, from my personal perspective, a great workplace is a place where every body feels that work is fun and that they’re happy. I for one, am having fun working with this amazing and unique team.
In the future we really hope to achieve the 1st place not because of the rank itself but because we, the members genuinely feel so! and maybe it’s not bad to also hope that someday, we’ll be included in Fortune BEST 100 Companies to work for.
Thank you for reading! :)
