Design Your Company To Empower Employees
Companies at the forefront of innovation are disrupting traditional hierarchical structures. They are designing more horizontal models that allow for teams to be closer to the business and promote greater levels of autonomy, creativity, and empowerment.
There is an abundance of research demonstrating that the biggest drivers of engagement and retention for employees are their connection to the organization (i.e. their ability to grow and develop along with the company). We know that building a culture based on trust, freedom, and empowerment — rather than hierarchy and control — unleashes innovation and leads to better results.
And with the war for technical talent at a level never before seen, attracting outstanding candidates and retaining them should be a top priority for CEOs and CTOs.
Let’s Rewind
A generation ago there was a set playbook for how to grow your career: go to a good school, put in your hours doing entry-level work, get noticed by the right people and climb your way up the corporate ladder. Persistence, resourcefulness, and ambition were rewarded; but characteristics such as creativity and out-of-the-box thinking were rarely encouraged for junior employees.
But with the recent surge of leading tech companies, philosophies around how to build a thriving organization evolved. Next-generation founders and executives began to recognize that without exceptional talent, you can’t build exceptional products and services. And what these employees want most is the opportunity to work on meaningful projects they care about, autonomy over those projects, and the ability to progress in the company and grow to have greater impact.
It’s not surprising that today, companies that embrace a strict hierarchy and stifle innovation find themselves on the losing end of the war for talent.
Externalizing The Culture Of Empowerment Through Product
At DigitalOcean, we’ve seen firsthand how a flat structure that eschews hierarchy empowers our teams, giving them the freedom to develop cutting-edge technology solutions by cutting down on internal bureaucracy. And this ethos is reflected in our product: we want to facilitate innovation for the millions of software developers around the world.
To succeed in this mission requires a deep foundational trust. The leaders need to trust the individual contributors that make up the engineering team, the engineers need to trust each other, and each department must be able to communicate openly and honestly across other factions of the organization.
To classically designed organizations, entrusting their employees with key decisions may seem risky, but we know it’s the only way to reach our full potential. That’s why we’re intentionally designing an organization without unnecessary layers of management, where we share information transparently across the organization, and where we trust the amazing talent we’ve hired to make smart decisions for themselves and for the business.
Because let’s be real: the greatest risk you actually run as a company is never reaching your full potential.
Looking Forward
Before joining DigitalOcean as the VP of People, I spent three years in a similar role at Return Path. Return Path is a visionary organization, recognized in 2014 as Fortune’s #2 Best Place to Work for medium-sized businesses due to its unique and transformative culture. Interestingly, RP offers very few of the “flashy” perks that are traditionally associated with companies on the list. Instead, RP focuses on something more authentic and difficult to achieve — building a people first culture based on transparency, feedback, and belief in the power of personal development. I learned a tremendous amount from the incredible leaders and mentors I worked with there.
At DigitalOcean, we are working hard to grow and develop our own authentic version of that type of culture. We know that appreciation and support for our employees trumps all. We’re a young company — we’re still learning and figuring out the best strategies for our team. As we continue to expand we’ll have to iterate.
But some things will never change.
We will always advocate for the growth and development of our employees. And we will continue to encourage open communication, feedback, collaboration, transparency, and most of all, love.
Key Takeaways
1) Personal growth & development drive retention. Even moreso than benefits or pay. The best companies care about their employees, and if you care about your employees, then you care about their personal growth and career trajectories. Having a nice office with a ton of perks is amazing, but not as amazing as feeling like your co-workers are your second family.
2) Trust the people you hire. Make sure your employees feel empowered to make decisions and take ownership for the projects they’re working on. If you’ve done a good job hiring smart talent and you’ve given them clear direction, this will put your company in the best position to succeed.
3) Treat your employees as equals. Remember, you’re not doing them a favor by letting them work for you — it’s the other way around. If you don’t empower your employees to own their work, or you stifle their innovation and creativity, you can guarantee they will not come to work fired up and fully engaged.
4) Don’t make your organization top-heavy. There’s a tendency in young companies to fill leadership roles first, usually at the Director or VP level. But not every functional head needs to have a senior title, and you run the risk of building an organization that has too much management with not enough individual contributors as you scale.
5) Feedback is a gift. A crucial part of a successful organization is communication, and feedback should be hard-wired into the culture. Semi-annual “performance reviews” are nowhere near enough; it needs to be an ongoing conversation and come from all directions. A regular cadence of reflection on how the employees are doing, how the leaders and managers are doing, and how the company is doing will ensure a constant iterative cycle of improvement.
At 135 employees and growing rapidly, we know we still have an incredible journey ahead. I hope to be able to share our progress in this space as we continue to transform the company that provides the simplest infrastructure for developers into the company that’s also the best place for them to work.
If you believe in DigitalOcean’s mission of empowering developers and simplifying innovation, check out our careers page!
