The importance of building a strong organisational culture

You spend a significant portion of your adult life at work, mounting up to many hours with your colleagues across various teams and projects. With that in mind, we believe that a positive work culture is key to truly getting the best of the time you spend at work.

Not only can a tightly defined culture drive creativity and collaboration across projects, it can help to make the workplace a genuinely enjoyable place to be. A huge part of this is down to our people, who are at the heart of everything that we do.

‘If you ask anyone who works here, they will tell you that we have a team who love working together, picking each other up after a tough day.’ — Chief Operating Officer, Andy Giancamilli

Our culture of knowledge sharing and team spirit is guided by our ten principles, which are not just stuck up on a wall then forgotten. They are talked about often, and are front of mind as we work. We celebrate team members who demonstrate those principles in their work ethic and output with our All-Stars Recognition Programme. The program is a peer-to-peer award nomination program that allows us to recognise employees who go above and beyond and who embody our values every day.

Our values are at the centre of our regular hackathons as well. For example, our December hackathon is based around our value that “simpler is always better”. All of the projects in the hackathon will work towards upholding that value; how can we make things simpler for our end users and for ourselves at work? Prizes will be awarded to the project that best demonstrates the value.

Our Technology Senior Vice President, Shane Sweeney, believes it helps us to work as one unit and recognises ‘a true sense of camaraderie’.

Of course, such diverse teams are not always going to agree on every approach and decision, but it’s key that everyone feels comfortable sharing their point of view, knowing that we are still one team working towards the same goals, even when we may have a difference of opinion or perspective.

Challenge, then commit.

That’s one of the key principles where our people are encouraged to voice concerns and challenge a course of action, if we think something could be done better. Once a decision is made however, we all strive to get behind it as a united team and commit to delivering the best possible outcome.

Our Senior Director of HR, Jill Cameron, thinks this mainly down to our culture not being one of defensive egos. Everyone is keen to ‘learn, share and collaborate’, acting on behalf of their team and the organisation.

In our view, this environment should begin the moment you step in the door. That’s why we are continuing to provide flexible spaces and facilities so our teams can choose where and how they do their best work. With our first UK Hub in Edinburgh and new Glasgow location inside Clockwise both launching over recent months, our teams are continuing to enjoy hybrid and co-located working options allowing them to achieve their full potential in a comfortable setting.

You can learn more about our ten principles here.

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