Powering the success of our business through the success of our people

By Jelena Djordjevic, Thumbtack’s Chief People Officer

Which is more important: building a culture people love or building a strong business? At Thumbtack, we believe you can’t have one without the other. A great culture attracts, retains, and motivates employees — but to invest in that experience, you need to have a thriving business. At the same time, people like to feel like their work is making a difference. All the perks in the world can’t make up for a mission they don’t believe in or a business that isn’t going anywhere.

We believe that in order to power the success of our business, we must invest in the success of our people. To that end, we’ve built a people strategy based on three pillars:

• Being a top place to work through our values-driven culture.
• Enabling business success with a high-impact team.
• Preparing for the future by building scalable infrastructure.

In this blog, I’ll explore Thumbtack’s people strategy, how we’ve put it to work in our organization and how we hold ourselves accountable to achieving our vision through a data-driven framework.

Fostering a values-driven culture

Our values are at the heart of everything we do. They define what we care about, how we behave and what we expect from ourselves and each other. A values-driven culture allows employees to be the best version of themselves, fully engaged in their work and with their team.

Thumbtack’s company culture is built around five core values:

• Lead with why. Every decision we make boils down to purpose and mission to ensure we are serving our customers and pros
• Make it count. Each action we take should drive meaningful impact and make a difference.
• Own it. Whatever we’re working on, it’s up to us to make it happen, own our commitments and learn from our mistakes
• Choose teamwork. We focus on helping each other achieve more — rather than doing more ourselves — because we can go faster and further when we work together.
• Say what you mean. We communicate openly, authentically, and respectfully to make each other, our culture, and our work better.

We embed these values in everything we do as individuals and as an organization and hold ourselves accountable for the way we live them day in and day out. They are embedded in our culture through programs including our nine employee resource groups (ERGs), Courageous Conversations series, and more. We celebrate the employees who best embody and exemplify our values through our annual Values Awards to highlight role models and practical examples of our values in action. And our leaders share their 360s to foster an open, growth-oriented culture.

By living our values, we make each other better, win together and deliver more for our pros and customers.

Cultivating a high-impact team

To best serve our customers and pros, we must build a high-impact team. That commitment plays out in every aspect of our employee experience, from the people we recruit to the ways we evaluate their performance, manage their work, develop their careers, and reward their contributions.

We start by attracting, assessing, and hiring the right candidates for the right roles — talented people who embody Thumbtack’s values and can succeed within our organization. We provide extensive training and support to hiring managers along this journey, ultimately landing great talent who will make an outsized impact and strengthen our culture.

Once an employee joins Thumbtack, we aspire to make it easy for them to be successful through clear goals and expectations. That includes making sure that everyone understands their role, why their work matters, and how they’ll be evaluated. Our performance reviews are closely tied to the impact each employee makes on the business, how they demonstrate the skills and behaviors associated with their role, and how well their work reflects our company values.

A great manager is critical to unlocking the full potential of their team — both of their business impact and professional growth. To empower and develop our leaders, we’re building a leadership philosophy and manager career criteria that clearly define their role, in addition to offering learning programs to develop them. To foster a deeper sense of camaraderie collaboration and mutual support, we’re investing in leadership forums, such as our Director+ and Senior Director+ forums.

We take care of the people so they can focus on our pros and customers. Our compensation programs provide fair, competitive, and equitable pay that recognizes employees for their impact. Our holistic benefits support our employees’ wellbeing so they can focus on their work without worrying about their health.

Building scalable infrastructure

To build a high-impact team and values driven culture we have to make sure we grow sustainably over the long term. By investing in scalable infrastructure, processes, and operating rhythms — building the machine that builds the machine — we can keep Thumbtack nimble and efficient for years to come.

Our investment in infrastructure is most visible in the thoughtful and deliberate way we run our business, from our strategy development, planning cycles, and roadmapping to the way we manage and optimize execution. Our directly responsible individual model (DRI) clarifies ownership and accountability to drive impact. We’re constantly improving and iterating our corporate processes to ensure they serve the evolving needs of our business and set our teams up for success.

Behind the scenes, we’re committed to ensuring employees can get what they need as conveniently as possible. We’ve invested in HR technology and systems to scale our impact and playbooks and knowledge hubs to make processes transparent and information accessible.

Holding ourselves accountable to our vision

To hold ourselves accountable to achieving our vision, we apply the same level of rigor and accountability you’d expect of any business unit. We’ve created a data-driven framework and established accountability mechanisms to measure the impact of our work and the health of the organization.

As a company, we define and track targets for core organizational health outcomes, such as recruiting, engagement and retention. To hold ourselves accountable and respond to emerging trends, we hold quarterly Org Health Reviews at the leadership and board level and share the results with the company during our QBR read out. As a People Team, we define and track measurable goals for each of our strategic pillars to assess our impact.

We don’t just analyze our impact. We take action on our learnings. Our employee engagement surveys give us valuable feedback to understand how well we’re tracking against our goals and inform our roadmap going forward.

Empowering our team to serve our pros and customers

Ultimately, the best companies in the world are obsessed with making it count. People teams should take the same approach. By building a values-driven culture and high impact team that is supported by scalable infrastructure, we’re ensuring that both our business and our employees thrive for the benefit of our customers and pros.

To learn more about working at Thumbtack visit careers.thumbtack.com

Originally published at https://blog.thumbtack.com on November 15, 2024.