Culture- our competitive weapon in war of talent
Evolution of human race is ongoing , we may or may not change in our physical appearance but we are constantly changing in other areas like the way we do work, managing relationships, lifestyle and so on. The time has changed and so has our working style, job has become more demanding, competition is high, stress levels are at peak, it’s no more a 9–5 job (thanks to the internet) and we end up spending most of our time at our work place with our office colleagues. Our expectations at work have changed, and it no longer revolves around just monetary considerations, it now includes, growth, challenges, the impact of our work and most importantly, we need to feel connected to the values of the company. Yet, after seeing so much of evolution around, many organisations are still running in a way which was more relevant years ago.
There are a handful of organisations( Google, Netflix among others) which have set an example in front of other organisations, of how important is the role of “culture” in a successful business setup and how it is evolving over time. More often than not, most companies ignore it and that MAY NOT be due to the belief system but rather due to low priority and in some cases, it’s adopted the way its been done at other places.
In my limited 15 years of experience, I’ve not seen the same culture in all the organisations and the reality is; it’s NOT possible to have the same kind of culture of what you have experienced/implemented in previous companies as all organisations are different in their DNA, their businesses, product, market, customers, talent, belief system. Everything is different. Still, a majority of companies try to copy & paste the same culture which has worked for others, without even giving it a genuine deep thought.
For the sake of ‘creating culture’, some organisations introduce ping pong table, or a PS4 for employee’s entertainment but when the same employee spends time playing on the ping pong table or trying their hands with PS4, they start blaming those things for downfall in the productivity and performance of employees . This action directly points towards “the culture” the organisation believes and wants to grow. At one end you want your employees to de-stress themselves (as you have seen some other companies doing it) but you don’t personally believe in it. This culture is definitely harmful in the long term for organisations. And sooner or later you regret your decision of modifying your culture.
Culture is not something which you bring in from outside, culture has always been in the company from day one, and it’s up to you to keep nurturing it based on how you value your employee’s opinion, learning, growth, their personal & professional development and how you see employees being part of the long journey with you.
The way MindTickle has consciously framed its culture is STRONGLY on the values we completely believe in and it comes with a strong buy-in from all employees; that’s the 1st and foremost important step we took. Our words and action always align. We believe in being authentic, transparent and do things with right intention, and we know that we have to keep improvising and be the better version of ourselves. In fact our name MindTickle was chosen considering Mind- (Highly Smart People), Tickle- (having fun).
Communication, right information sharing and listening to our employees helps. The key is if we share information transparently and keep everyone updated on what is happening and what’s the plan to go ahead and fix things, employees have always appreciated and continue to appreciate it and if there is something that employees do not agree with they always let us know which helps us come to solutions which all of us believe in.
Being owner of work is the crux of our culture, it gives the individual the power of making decisions and be responsible for that decision. Everyone can feel the impact of their work at MindTickle.
MindTickle is unique in its product and a category creator in our space, and the same uniqueness is also applied in our “culture” and “people first” ideology.
In this tug of war for talent, we are fighting with our primary weapon of “culture” and recently it helped us in achieving some recognition towards it. We are in the list of Top 50(rank 47) Great Place to Work in Mid Size Organisation, India and one of the Top 50( rank 29) companies to work for in Cloud Computing by Battery Ventures, US.
This is just the beginning and we have a long way to go to scale our “culture” but we are confident of doing it in the right direction as the foundation of our culture is built with right intention & authenticity. And to make sure we scale the culture in the right way an utter carefulness goes in hiring and the ones who contribute to our culture rather than being just a fit for our culture are chosen to be a MindTickler.
