Cultivating a Thriving Company Culture

Can you hear me? Alright, that looks good. I'm so excited for the second day, and really happy to see everyone enjoying their time at Civo Navigate. This is the first of many amazing events that we're planning to do, but yeah, I'm really, really happy. Yesterday was a lot of fun, today is also a lot of fun and yeah, today we'll talk about the secret ingredients to building a thriving company culture.

My name is Kunal. I work as a DevRel Manager at Civo. I'm involved in a lot of communities. I do a lot of content creation, community work, and being a CNCF ambassador. I have my own community that I started, a YouTube channel so on and so forth, so you get the idea. But yeah, culture is very important.

I graduated last year and Civo is my first full-time job. But I've worked with Civo, I think it'll be two years in May. Time flies.

Let's talk a little bit about the challenges that arise when we talk about building a company culture. It may affect anyone, both juniors and seniors. I'd like to make this session a little bit more interactive. So, anyone over here who feels there are some challenges you might face in your workplace? Yeah, go ahead. Cross-team communication? That's a good one, especially with monitoring and cost optimization with Cloud, you have to explain why your bills are rising to people who are not that much into Tech.

This whole idea of remote work after the pandemic grew really, really quickly. So, there's that, and then there's growth, growth of employees, individuals, and of the company. There's one talk I did yesterday about imposter syndrome, I got a good feedback, so you can check the recording out later. That's also another issue. Anyone here suffer from imposter syndrome? Alright, there's nothing wrong with it. Imposter syndrome is fine. You can check the recording to learn more about that.

There's one more thing going on right now - layoffs. There's too many layoffs happening, it's a very scary situation. So we'll talk all about these things and how we at Civo have cultivated a really awesome culture among our team members. And hopefully, it would be insightful.

By the way, we'll also play a game. In the end, I'll have a little game that you can play and take part in and we're happy to send some swag and stuff like that.

Cool, so the first thing we talk about is the vision. This is the Civo vision, you can find it on our website. It's very important to cultivate a vision amongst the organization, from the smallest roles, junior roles, to the top most senior roles. We'll talk about empowering people, talk about growth, we'll talk about mentoring people. So I figure, you know, make sure you know the vision is clear, and you know why you started the company, for example, what do you want to achieve, what are you trying to do, what are your goals and all sorts of things.

So before we move forward with the best practices for a thriving company culture, as the title suggests, let's look at some of the studies that folks have done in the industry and we'll use these studies to see some of the best practices later on.

If you talk about culture, for example, studies show that culture is the top priority among job seekers, and the retention heavily relies on how good the culture is of the company. Is culture important for everyone here? Nice, people value culture.

So, some of the stats that you can see on the screen - 46% of job seekers say company culture is very important when choosing to apply to a company. Do you belong to that 46%? I know I do. 15% of job seekers turn down a job offer because of the company culture. 32% of people polled in the United States say that they would take a 10% pay cut to work at a company where they like the culture. You can see 60% of workers would even take half of the potential paycheck if it meant working at a job that they love. One third of job seekers report being willing to take a 10% pay cut for a job they're passionate about.

Right, so that's about culture. Some stats from the leadership. 58% of workers in the survey would stay at a lower-paying job if it means they have a great boss. Employees are 23% more likely to stay at a company if their manager clearly explains their roles and responsibilities. 91% of the managers in the US say that a candidate's alignment with the company culture is very, very important when we compare it to their skills, expertise, and experience. 76% of employees also believe that a well-defined business strategy helps cultivate a positive culture, which we'll talk more about later.

So, how can you distribute the business strategy amongst all employees and team members? We do a lot of things at Civo, culture-wise. We've adopted a lot of things and I'd love to hear your views about it, and how your company is tackling it.

I know many people who are not willing to work non-remotely. I personally like a hybrid work culture. I like meeting people, but I think remote work definitely has a lot of benefits. Especially for countries that may not have advanced economies or have a large population. Working remotely eliminates the barriers people have with borders. I've been working remotely for Civo, there are so many staff here from around the world. It wouldn't have been possible for not just Civo, but many companies, to work with people around the world if not for remote work.

Some stats, as you can see on the screen - 65% of employees think they would be more productive at home than in an office. 36% of employees consider leaving their jobs because they can't work remotely. This happened a lot after the pandemic when people were asked to return, they said they would not go back. 28% of workers say they would take a pay cut to work remotely. 77% of employees say that flexible work options would enable them to lead healthier lives. 52% of hiring managers at organizations where remote work is available reported fewer difficulties in hiring. That makes sense because you now have access to a global talent pool.

Is there anyone here who does not prefer working remotely? I'd love to hear why. And it's totally okay. There's no one right answer because it depends on the person. Some people like the in-person culture, some people like remote work culture.

So, anyone here works remotely? Oh, yeah? Good. What do you like about the in-person culture? Could we get a mic to them? It's good, yeah. Because I agree with that point, I'll add on to it later. You go ahead.

Okay, I actually like hybrid best. In-person is needed for personal interaction with people and there's some things that are just better handled that way. The flexibility of remote is fantastic. We've found that having a mix of both tends to be the most effective if possible.

Yeah, I agree. When you're working in person, you just meet someone in the hallway, have a chat, discuss ideas. When you're working remotely, you have to set up a Zoom call days in advance. There's this thing that I suffer from called Zoom fatigue - too many meetings. But, there are pros and cons to everything.

Now, let's move on to the good part - best practices. We follow some at Civo, and I'd love to hear about what you do at your companies.

Work-life balance is very, very important. Can anyone here share about how important work-life balance is to you? Anyone? We have some swag to give away. Yeah, Ramiro, go ahead.

For me work life balance is very important. Work is one aspect of life. If you don't have a good balance, burnout is real. It's something that has to be watched out for. Keeping a good balance, making sure that you have a sustainable rate of work, it's key. It's something that my company pushes a lot, especially because it's something that's harder to achieve in remote companies. You don't have a commute, so you don't have that mental break of being done with work.

It's hard to find balance. The way I work is, I have a different setup for personal stuff and work stuff. One thing that helps quite a lot is not having my bed in my eyesight when I'm working. And, I never work on my bed, only at my desk.

Work-life balance is obviously the first slide that I have in terms of some of the best practices to follow. First of all, we don't track hours here at Civo. It's not like, "Okay, you work from nine to five, that's the measure of success." We don't do that. It's more about how productive you are and if you're getting the work done, we set some rules, working toward those goals.

The second one is a four-day work week. Now, this is an interesting one. We tried a four-day work week on a trial basis. After the trial period, what we saw was that the efficiency did not really go down. People were happier. Thursday is the new Friday. And, with the efficiency and everything, you can see all the new product launches that we did. So, I did not really see any downsides to a four-day work week.

Around last year, I think in June, in the UK, around 70 to 80 companies comprising of more than 3,000 employees embarked on perhaps the largest workplace experiment. They were all doing a four-day work week. There's actually a website you can go to that lists all the jobs that have a four-day work week culture.

The trial for a four-day work week is usually based on the 100-80-100 principle. Employees receive 100% of the pay for 80% of the usual hours. But as I mentioned, we don't track hours. The 100-80-100 rule is in exchange for a commitment to maintain 100% productivity. So it's not like a four-day work week means less pay, no. It's the original pay for a five-day work week but with the expectation that the efficiency is still there.

During the pilot of this four-day work week in the UK, 88% of respondents reported that the four-day work week was working well within their business. Nearly half, around 46%, said that productivity had maintained around the same level. 34% reported that it improved slightly, while 15% reported that productivity had significantly improved since they implemented a four-day work week.

There's another aspect I want to touch on. I do a lot of community work, as a CNCF Ambassador and working on initiatives for students. Having a four-day work week helps me quite a lot. I use my extra day to create content or work on my initiatives.

Everyone's got a side hustle and is into different things. I personally don't think a company should view that as a bad thing. It's great for the company because it fosters creativity. We're in the tech industry, a very creative industry. We should fully encourage and support this as much as possible. Any questions around 4 day work week? Yes?

How did you or any of these studies represent productivity when they were measuring it? Did you just ask people “Did you feel more productive?” or was there some quantitative measures that you could use?

Definitely, there's a quantitative measure as well amongst teams at Civo. If I take an example, because I've lived through that, so we used to say something like this: every Friday, we would post in the Slack channel who's working. It was on a trial basis, so we're like 'Okay, taking these days off' and stuff like that. Then we measured it, you know. We have some set goals, like Q1, Q2, or whatever. We are, let's say, KubeCon is coming up, we want to launch this product. Civo Navigate is coming, we have to launch the PaaS, or machine learning, and all these other things. So, are we able to hit our targets? Are we reaching the deadline? I think I believe in numbers quite a lot. I'm very much into stats and everything. So, that's how we basically did it.

A negative scenario would be like, 'Okay, 40 work week, you're not getting many things accomplished in a week.' For example, a four-day week and your deadlines are not being met. But as long as the deadlines are being met, your innovation is happening, and all these other things. That's basically it, with me at least.

All right. It helps quite a lot and open source as well. Most companies contribute to open source, so you can use that extra time to contribute to open source. And open source benefits your company. It's nice.

Let's see what folks Civo here like. Four-day work week, Alejandro likes it. Awesome! All right. What do you do on Fridays and Saturdays, Monday? Now, do you have a three-day weekend? All right, that's nice. Yeah, so there you go.

Now, on the topic of uncapped holidays. It's a bit controversial and tricky. I don't think it really relates to uncapped holidays at all, I think it relates to your manager. Some people feel guilty about taking too many holidays. I don't think that's the case with the policy of uncapped holidays, I think it's the case with the culture of your company and your manager.

We're still required to take holidays. I know I was when I was in Civo. It was like last December, and the people team contacted me and they're like, 'Kunal, you have not taken a holiday. Is it mandatory?' Yeah, you have to take some holiday. I think I might be wrong. I think it's a rule in Europe for work-life balance.

Personally, I love uncapped holidays, I think it's good. Usually, after Kubecon, I take a week or like four days off. I went to Bali after the previous Kubecon, which was fun because Kubecon is always very hectic. So, in the end, if you meet someone who thinks that uncapped holidays are not good or have too many downsides, it has nothing to do with the concept of an uncapped holiday. It's about the company culture and your managers. That's it.

Next, let's talk about unlock sessions. We at the Civo team have these nice little sessions. Unlock is a platform, and we use it for our sessions. We meet periodically, I think it's weekly, and we do these unlock sessions as a kind of team-building exercise. We play games, have guests over sometimes - there was this one guy who did a magic show. We had one unlock session about wine tasting, which was fun. There was a scavenger hunt and a little music session too.

I've worked with so many people. For example, I started almost two years ago in May, and I spoke to Alejandro in the audience. I then met him at Kubecon in person. I had no idea he was that funny; I thought he was a serious guy. You learn a lot about people when you interact outside of work.

Why am I mentioning unlock sessions? In a remote environment, you don't get to meet people, so activities like these are very helpful. We'll talk a lot about the remote activities we follow because remote work is tricky. But these unlock sessions have worked very well. We love them, and they're very good. I look forward to most unlock sessions.So, unlock sessions are nice and one of the ways we maintain work-life balance.

Another important concept we follow at Civo is a no-blame culture. We don't blame people, don't point fingers. My mom used to say, if you point one finger at someone, three fingers are pointing back at you. So, we don't do that at Civo. We don't point fingers, we don't blame.

If something happens, we discuss what we could have done better, what went well and what didn't. How can we improve? Even here at Civo navigate, I was asking people to give me the good, the bad, the ugly. How are they finding the event and what can we do to improve? We always take criticism, constructive criticism, very positively.

We follow a no-blame culture at Civo. We don't blame people, we don't point fingers, and we work together as a team to find answers to thesolutions. All questions are valid. No bad questions. You can ask anything and get good answers. This is important because folks who are new to the company might feel that if they ask a question and it has an obvious answer, they would look silly.

If anyone has that fear, right, you don't ask a question because you feel like the answer might be obvious, so you just don't ask it otherwise people might think you're not cool. But some people do that. I used to do it when I was a student. I would wonder, 'Should I ask this question or not?' But the company culture is built around the idea that no question is a bad question. You can ask anything and you'll get some nice answers. At the very least, people would point you to the right resources and things like that.

Next, let's talk about professional growth, which is very important. We focus on employees' professional growth and personal growth, which we'll talk about later. I'd like to give some pointers on professional growth.

Point number one is to give some responsibilities to the employees to shape their own careers. Have a progression path. If someone has started as a Junior, what do they want to do and how do they want that path to look like? For example, if you're working as a DevRel, what do you want to do in the future and after that and after that? For a junior engineer, it might be moving towards being a senior engineer or SRE. We at Civo, when I joined, Mark asked me, 'What do you want to do? What direction do you want to go into?' It's very important to have a clear progression path and give responsibilities to people to shape their own role as they move forward.

Point number three is progress check-ins. Not weekly, but periodically checking in on progress, asking 'How's it going? What have you done? What are your future plans?'

Point number four is promotions, a good aspect when we're talking about career growth.

I'd like to mention a concept around non-linear progression. People who are experts in their field sometimes feel like they've reached the peak of their career, they know everything, and then they start asking 'Now what? Am I learning something new? Am I contributing to something new? Am I better than I was yesterday?' This is the point where people tend to switch jobs.

However, if someone is performing exceptionally well as a specialist, it doesn't automatically mean that they would be an exceptional manager. For example, a front-end developer who has won 20 awards, who is a great open-source contributor - would they be a good team lead? Maybe, maybe not.

And the other point is, not everyone wants to be a manager. Some people like being in their domain only, for years and years. They might think, 'I don't want to be a manager, I just want to do this.'

One thing that works really well here is a non-linear progression. Instead of a linear progression, go non-linear. This means you can give them different responsibilities, they can try other things out, and they can see what works for them. Because that opens up more thinking outside the box, more opportunities, more possibilities, all sorts of things.

Professional growth is again very important for company culture because when a person joins the company - I can only speak for juniors because I'm a junior - it's not just about working for the company, but it's also about what the company is doing to help you as an individual, and that's very important.

Let's move on to personal growth. For example, there are courses, certificates, conferences, office supplies like chairs, and reimbursements. For instance, when I joined, I got a MacBook. Personal growth is about supporting your personal development. It depends on your manager, how close you are with the people you work with. So yeah, courses, personality development, and basically stuff outside of work, it again depends on the managers.

Alright, moving on to diversity and inclusion. I believe diversity in the workplace and participation from people hailing from different cultural backgrounds are necessary and very instrumental for the growth of the IT sector. Why? Because it exposes one to the multitude of values and principles that people from various backgrounds hold. When you meet people from around the world, which we're doing with remote work and global hiring, it teaches people to respect opposing perspectives and opinions, and ingrains in them respect for their peers.

So, diversity and inclusion are great. We have people around the world, so from a company standpoint, it's helping the company as well. We can do events around the world, we get so much feedback, and so many other things. Civo is a great example for this because we have people located in India, Bangladesh, Europe, the US, all over.

Next, empathy. It's very important. It's about putting yourself in other people's shoes, whether you talk about your employees, customers, open source projects, users, or family members. Empathy is ingrained in every aspect.

Have a quick question. Do you think empathy can be taught? The answer is yes. It can be taught. Empathy relates to code, which involves communication. When you're communicating with someone, that communication brings empathy. So I like to correlate empathy with tech in those three orders.

It's very important as a culture as well, in relation to your video users, customers, partners, everywhere.

Let's talk about recognition, through Tacos. Whenever someone does something good, we give them a Taco - I mean, virtual tacos. There's this app called 'Hey Taco.' You can check it out. We've integrated it into our Slack channel. When someone does something good, or something you want to give a shout out for, you just add their name and put the taco emoji. So in the leaderboard, you can see who's given and received the most tacos. It's a fun way to support and recognize people.

The Chief Taco Officer, Dinesh, CTO, I think, has given the most number of tacos. It's very nice, and I highly recommend checking stuff like this out. Celebrating small wins, giving people recognition because when you recognize good behavior and good work, it motivates them to do it even more. We focus on celebrating wins, no matter how big or small, at Civo. So give tacos.

This is the last point. I'd just like to close with this slide, 'Don't buy stars, build them.' You don't always have to hire experts. You can also hire people who can be taught all the tech stuff. You can't teach someone how to be a good person. If you see the growth within your company, it's amazing. So don't buy stars, build them.

I think that's it. But, this is a little bit of a game. It's bingo. So you can take a picture of this and you can mark all the things you have in your company. Or whatever else, something like that. You can tweet it on social media. And yeah, that was it.