Thread by @AabhashK

I work at a 220-person org that's listed as 'Best org for Remote Workers 2022' by Quartz and rated 4.6 on Glassdoor. For every 3 likes on this tweet, I'll post one tip, policy, take, example of what Springworks does to be an employee-centric organisation 🙌🏽

1/ Whenever I speak to founders/HR/People Ops from orgs that are looking to set policies, I see them focus on 'what if the policy is misused'. At Springworks, we don't focus on bottom 5% behaviour. We lead with trust - policies are made with the best employees in mind

2/ Most orgs overthink when they need to thank people ('do we thank them for doing things that are part of their day-to-day job?'). At Springworks, we have built a culture of appreciation for each other (peers, reportees and managers) that's not based on "outcome/impact-only"

3/ We use Slack and have built an app to appreciate, celebrate, listen to and reward employees - EngageWith
springworks.in/engagewith/
And it's used by 100s of other orgs that use Slack and MS Teams 🤓

4/ we are async-heavy, remote org - the way we work is a BIG part of culture in 2022. Making 'Remote Work' work takes a lot of work 🤓 Everyone here makes that effort - leads to a flexible, work-from-anywhere, high-trust culture. Pay-off is exponential for employee well-being 🤩

5/ @kar2905 never ever shys away from addressing feedback - whether constructive or purely negative. We've got anon / non-anon channels, all feedback is addressed publicly. Employees build perceptions via hearsay, tackle them head-on rather than letting them take their own shape

6/ Given we're remote, we encourage workations / Springworks has allocated INR 25,000 per year per FTE to use towards workations

Interestingly, now teams/pods are pooling their workation budgets and doing their own mini-offsites 😍
Pictures 😃

7/ Springworks (courtesy @kar2905) is fairly transparent. Our revenue numbers, weekly growth numbers, and other such metrics are shared on the public Slack channel every Monday. This helps employees understand how we make money - and helps keep everyone aligned to bottom line

8/ Our core culture tenet is 'Err on the side of over-communication'. No that doesn't mean more Zoom calls. For us it means:
- written communication over spoken
- more communication in public channels vs closed/DMs
- default to org-wide GDocs read-only access

9/ Springworks encourages side projects, freelancing, advising/consulting on the side. We removed the non-compete clause for all our employees back in February - both new and existing.

10/ Auto-approvals on all leaves. We do a fixed number of leaves as opposed to the trend of unlimited leaves (which has been proven to lead to lesser leaves taken)
Employees let their teammates know about their leaves/availability in advance eliminating the need for approvals

11/ Here's how we get employees well-versed with our HR initiatives/policies:

-> Pick the main highlights of our HR initiatives📝
-> Create a quiz out of it❓
-> launch as a quiz on Slack for employees to participate😁
We use Trivia's custom quiz feature: springworks.in/trivia/games/c…

12/ Here is a list of employee benefits we offer:
- WFH setup allowance
- Lifestyle allowance
- Learning & Development budget
- Paid internet
- Access to coaching (for to-be managers/existing managers to level up)
contd.../

13/ contd../ list of employee benefits we offer
- virtual team-building activities
- weekly paid team lunches/snacks
- ₹₹ for paid subscriptions/communities
- mental health support
- workation benefits (noted in a tweet above)

14/ Employee onboarding is a huge part of people management. Here's our onboarding process:
Before the date of joining:
- send out swag
- connect the new employee with their manager
- set up a short call with the manager
- activate background verification process
contd.../

15/ contd.../ before the date of joining:
- connect with IT for equipment
- send relevant welcome emails
- loom video from the CEO

16/ onboarding contd.../

on the day of joining:
- complete HR formalities in the first half of first half (prev steps help)
- manager's calendar blocked for Week 1 expectation setting meeting
- send lunch to the new hire
- set up intro meeting with immediate team members

17/ onboarding contd.../
the first week:
- manager is responsible for getting the new hire a quick win - get something live, publish etc
- get the culture of recognition going w/ recognising the quick win
- ensure the new hire's buddy is equipped to help them 100%

18/ At Springworks, we have a buddy system. An experienced employee is connected w/ new hires 1 week before day of joining.
They act as a friend, help ease into work.
Added to the pre-onboarding process.
+ we recognise buddies every quarter based on feedback from the new hires

19/ "Be a magnet, not a jail." - @stephsmithio
We focus on what we do best - remote, async, employee-first - so we attract the kind of talent that prioritises these
As in, we have niched down our positioning to focus on only the kind of people that want to work with us

20/ On the point of leaves, to ensure over-communication we have built a Leave app inside Slack that pulls the leave data from our HRMS and announces to the relevant channels where the employees are every morning. Remember, all leaves are auto-approved

21/ New manager training and Manager up-skilling - we offer managerial coaching to employees who have recently made Manager or want to upskill and improve their managerial capabilities

22/ We focus on assignments as a key part of our hiring process for mid-to-senior-ish roles and any assignment that takes more than a couple of hours' time of the candidates is paid for in Amazon gift vouchers (as soon as they submit the assignment, irrespective of next steps)

Shameless plug 😅
Set your HR/People Ops teams up for success. Tools are there for a reason. Let them focus on 'doing things that don't scale'. For the rest, there's EngageWith: springworks.in/engagewith/ 🤓💪🏽

23/ We have a 2-week notice period policy at Springworks. If someone is fired, they still get paid the full month's salary and they have no obligation to work beyond the 2-week notice period.

24/ On the topic of 'leaves' again, while companies do hire adults on their payroll, many of them fail to treat these employees like adults - I believe the leave policy to be a MAJOR indicator of culture.

Here's a reminder I frequently share with my team 👇🏽

25/ More you see hyper-funded startups throw money around chasing talent, the more obvious it becomes how challenging 'culture-focus' is.

Solid company culture takes 'Doing things that don't scale', BUT it's an inordinate advantage for cos in the long run. Play the long game 🙏🏻

26/ Companies trying to appeal to everyone wrt culture lose out to the ones that take a hard stance.

Don't build your policy to accommodate the lowest common denominator. Instead, stand for a set of core values and be unapologetic about it, to attract the like-minded.

Side note (this is my personal take): There should be a special place in hell for the management team of companies that have a 3-month notice period 💩

27/ Oversimplistic but useful proxy for evaluating Work Culture 👇

Can you take a 45-min lunch break without ⤵️

• being interrupted by internal calls 📞
• colleagues pinging you with urgent requests 📩
• general anxiety about taking 45 mins for 🍱 🥗 🍕?

caveat/contd...

28/ contd...

If you answered "No", then your company probably has a shitty Work Culture.

Caveat: If this happens once in a while, it's understandable.

29/ Having said that, here's a learning from the last 11 years having worked at startups, and MORE IMPORTANTLY having spoken to 1000s of founders and employees of all sorts of cos

There's no one (or even 10) correct ways/methods to build a 100-1000 crore business.

contd...

30/ You can build a co with a small number of employees or you can be one of those cos that hires in droves.

You can raise multiple rounds of funding or be bootstrapped.

contd...

31/ The org could be one where everyone works 80-hours-a-week or it could be one where efficiency is of the paramount importance and things get done with 40-hour work-weeks.

You can be completely-remote, completely in-office or hybrid!

contd...

32/ You can be a co that is super-aggressive with goals, but super-kind with your people. At the same time, I have seen examples of founders/managers who are complete a-holes and they still succeed.

contd...

33/ The point is advice is aplenty, but the truth is theories on how to build a company can be at extreme ends of the spectrum and still work for different kinds of orgs.

contd...

34/ In all of this, both as founders or even as an employee, you need to find where you lie in this spectrum - find your value system and build/work at the company that most closely resembles it 🙏🏽

35/ We don't do daily 'standup calls'. We use Troopr DSRs (Daily Status Reports) - list down everything done through the day. Easier to document, we hold fewer meetings, and EOD we review tasks to identify those that need to be finished the following day

36/ To improve the gender ratio, one tactical thing (apart from other long-term stuff) we do at Springworks is with our internal employee referral policy - we pay double the referral amount for a female candidate

37/ Clear, transparent communication on empanelling vendors - for example, we regularly share updates on why we decided to go with a particular Employee Health Insurance provider. The goal is not to get inputs, but to make aware of what the decision-making process looks like

38/ Few dedicated channels in our Slack (for you to consider implementing):
#fun - for all fun games, chit chats, banter (Trivia app)
#gratitude - dedicated to p2p recognitions (EngageWith app)
#celebrations - birthdays and work anniversary notifs
#exec-ama - anon AMAs w/ sr mgmt

39/ Springworks has been a Slack user since 2014. Want to learn more about how we leverage Slack as our Remote HQ? Slack did a case study/customer story about us. Check it here: slack.com/intl/en-in/cus…

40/ Few orgs leverage their employee voice well on social media. We do it well at Springworks, especially on LinkedIn.
So how do we get employees to post on LinkedIn? 👇🏽
contd...

41/ Well, we don't ask them to 'post on LinkedIn'.

Instead, we tell them it's perfectly ok to build their personal brands and they can very well use the company time to do this.

What does this look like 👇🏽

contd...

42/ first of all - Clear-cut, straightforward communication

No Springworks employee HAS TO post on LinkedIn, but if one is building their personal brand, they get recognized for it (we use EngageWith Slack app for recognitions)

contd...

43/ Unlike some other orgs, we don't make employees feel like they're wasting company time by posting on LinkedIn during work hours.

Instead, we make it clear (incl @kar2905) that it's perfectly fine and in fact, we welcome it 🙌🏽

contd...

44/ secondly, we explain why we encourage employees to build their personal brand

What's in it for them and what's in it for us?

That 'why' is all the inbound requests we get for demos of Springworks products 'coz someone read about us on LinkedIn.

contd...

45/ Thirdly, the ones posting on LinkedIn aren't the minority

So, it's not unique for a Springworks employee to be building their personal brand. In fact, we encourage each other and support each other on LinkedIn (folks can share their posts on #random in Slack)

contd...

46/ In short, if you've wondered why you aren't able to get your employees to participate on LinkedIn, it's because you have made it ONLY about the company, and not ALSO about them 🙏🏽