By Pooja Samuel, People Operations Manager at EasyLlama
The corporate culture at EasyLlama is ultimately defined by the fact that we put the needs of our employees first. As a company, we support experimenting, innovation, and transparency to develop creative answers and concepts while fostering a culture of trust to try new things. In this article, we’ll talk more about how EasyLlama continues to grow our company culture, and how you can take these concepts and put them in place to benefit your own organization.
What is Company Culture?
Company culture is defined as the set of shared values, attitudes, and beliefs that characterize an organization and guide its behavior. It includes a variety of elements, such as company mission, values, ethics, expectations, and goals.
At EasyLlama, we are a people-first organization, which ultimately defines our company culture. As an organization, we champion experimentation to create innovative solutions and ideas, while nurturing a culture where employees can fail without fear. Empowering our employees to make crucial career decisions begins with building a foundation of trust, accountability, and transparency between direct reports and managers, and employees and the organization.
The Foundation of our Company Culture
Accountability is created through goal-setting frameworks as well as weekly 1:1s between managers and direct reports. We plan to further our emphasis on accountability through creating job leveling, company-wide and role-specific competencies, and a predictable performance review cadence. Beginning with the manager and direct report relationship, we establish trust by giving employees autonomy in their work. We also encourage conversations about management style preferences, because not all of us want to be managed in the same manner.
Transparency is something that has occurred naturally at EasyLlama and is modeled from the top down. We advocate for managers to have conversations about performance and growth regularly and we are committed to creating feedback loops through multiple channels. We are also transparent about when we make mistakes as individuals and as an organization. With this foundation of trust, accountability, and transparency, employees are empowered to prioritize their careers and pivot as necessary.
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Growing Within EasyLlama’s Culture
Many employers don’t consider an employee’s growth potential until a year or more into their tenure at a company. On the EasyLlama team, we focus on growth before an employee is even hired. We make all hiring decisions with growth and innovation in mind, in order to retain our employees for as long as we can. As we scale, we nurture growth through establishing career paths and individual development plans.
We believe in a career lattice versus a career ladder and understand that the path to a fulfilling career is not always linear. We aim to support our employees in each stage of their careers with us and invest in their growth and development through the practices and programs mentioned above.
How We Promote a Positive Culture
Beyond empowering our employees to make crucial career decisions, our company culture also focuses on diversity and inclusion, employee appreciation, and flexibility in a remote work environment. The EasyLlama team is fully remote with employees all over the world, and we don’t constantly check up on how how much time our employees work. We believe that trust is the only way being remote can actually work.
We make it a point to show our employees how much we appreciate them by celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, significant life events, as well as providing support in hard times. We host monthly virtual happy hours so that our employees can get to know each other beyond just the context of work, and we also reimburse career development materials. We sponsor employees to attend conferences and training programs that will further their growth, because our culture is to grow from within.
At EasyLlama, we also practice what we teach. Our employees take the same trainings that we provide to our clients in order to help increase awareness and understanding of differences so that our actions can contribute to an inclusive and diverse workplace culture.
Benefits of a Welcoming Company Culture
While we recognize that every company is different, we believe that you can take a number of these company culture values to implement in your own workplace. In fact, a positive and welcoming company culture can offer a number of benefits to both employers and employees. Research shows that millennials are 83% more likely to be engaged in their work when their employer provides an inclusive company culture.
Using learned communication skills in a team setting can also increase productivity and foster positive workplace relationships. The ability to communicate effectively and listen actively are vital skills for companies looking to advance in the marketplace, resulting in increased efficiency and greater teamwork among employees.
Next Steps
Want to learn more about the values and training that EasyLlama uses to promote growth among employees? Our courses in topics like diversity and inclusion, leadership management, interviewing and hiring, and code of conduct have a wealth of knowledge to improve the company culture at your organization. Access your free course preview from EasyLlama today to learn more about creating a positive work environment for your employees.
Interested in joining the Llama herd? Visit our careers page to check out our open positions and learn more about what it’s like to work at EasyLlama!
