DISBAND THE CULTURE CLUB - Rethink Hiring, Onboarding, L&D
There is a Culture Club forming that cites culture as the reason people need to work in a building. I challenge every member of this club to find a definition of culture that refers to a location, a building, or an office. You won’t find one.
This will be a Culture Club series of newsletters as we explore what needs to be eradicated and replaced to build a thriving culture in a distributed workforce. Last week, we looked at leadership and how it must evolve.
This week, we will explore the aspect of hiring, onboarding and learning programs. You can only have a thriving culture when you hire for culture add, have excellent onboarding methods that make everyone feel a sense of inclusivity and belonging, and provide growth and learning opportunities for all employees.
Hiring
Fully remote or distributed organisations have the benefit of being able to hire employees from a global talent pool.
Location
There are considerations regarding where your employees are located, including determining salary, managing payroll and taxes, determining permanent establishment risk, and protecting IP. All these aspects need to be investigated.
For example, Atlassian can hire people in Australia and any of the other 13 countries in which they have a legal entity.
You must understand the employment regulations and laws in the countries where you are hiring from. GitLab, one of the world’s largest all-remote companies, has this guidance on its website.
“Based on the outcome of its global expansion process for gathering and assessing relevant details on any particular country (which include local employment legislation and statutory requirements, potential PEO/EOR service agreements or limitations, branch or entity incorporation options, product and privacy considerations etc), GitLab’s employment team provides information regarding legal risk and compliance requirements based on particular jurisdictions and particular job types. Often, it is up to the others within the organization whether or not to continue down a certain path once the risks and requirements are known.”
Note: EOR – Employer of Record; PEO – Professional Employer Organisation
Its advice to applicants is:
“GitLab hires new team members in countries around the world. All of our roles are remote, however some roles may carry specific location-based eligibility requirements. Our Talent Acquisition team can help answer any questions about location after starting the recruiting process.“
Principles
Your approach to hiring should be transparent. HubSpot publishes its recruiting principles.
“Whether or not you decide to join our team, our goal is to create a candidate experience that’s positive, inclusive, and helpful.”
Their principles are:
· It’s about culture-add, not culture fit.
· Résumés aren’t everything.
· We’re transparent about compensation.
· Recruiters want you to succeed.
· We prepare for interviews, too.
· Feedback helps us grow.
Hiring Success has three hiring principles:
Compelling candidate experience
Engaged hiring managers
Productive recruiters
Process
Your hiring process should be transparent. People should know what to expect if they apply for a role with your company.
HubSpot also publishes the process with details about each step.
· Submit an application.
· Recruiter phone interview.
· Assessment.
· Manager phone interview.
· Face-to-face interviews.
· Decision stage.
· New hire onboarding.
You should also provide information about how long each part of the process takes.
Sharing the hiring principles and process has already informed a potential candidate about the organisational culture.
Atlassian also publishes its process and provides an interview handbook for roles within the company, including engineering, product, and design.
DELL Technologies provides extensive guidance on its hiring process, including tips and advice.
Google makes its hiring process an important part of its culture.
“Google’s hiring process is an important part of our culture. Googlers care deeply about their teams and the people who make them up. We also care about building a more representative and inclusive workplace, and that begins with hiring. In order to truly build for everyone, we know that we need a diversity of perspectives and experiences, and a fair hiring process is the first step in getting there.” The Google Careers webpage then breaks down the process both visually and verbally to turn those abstract statements into a tangible map for potential applicants to follow.
Zapier makes a commitment to applicants to ensure they are comfortable and excited to apply to Zapier.
Benefits and perks
Atlassian is also clear about employee support, benefits and perks, and work-life balance for each of the countries in which you can work. For example, if you’re applying for a job in India, you will see that you are entitled to employee gratuity payments. This is an Act specific to India and, therefore, not mentioned in the benefits and perks available in other countries.
Again, clarity is key. It must be clear how entitlement to qualify for certain benefits and perks is achieved. Is it by default, or do you need to be an employee for a certain period?
GitLab is absolutely clear about its general and entity-specific benefits on offer.
Job description
The job description must be 100% accurate. There can be no ambiguity about what the role entails and what is expected of the employee. For example, it must be clear whether this is a fully remote role or an on-site position.
The job description should be open and honest about the organisation, its culture, its values, and the way in which it works, e.g. management styles. Describe what success in the role looks like. It will be an organisational choice whether to include salary information in the job description, but if you want to support a culture of transparency, I suggest you do.
Buffer upholds transparency as a core value by sharing its formula-based approach to compensation, including the complete list of salaries, starting with the CEO.
There should be information about career paths and learning and development programs available to the successful applicant.
It should be concise with the eradication of meaningless buzzwords that infer you may be glossing over something. That does not align with a culture of honesty, transparency and trust.
Culture-add
I want to come back to one of the HubSpot principles – hire for culture-add, not culture fit. When you hire for culture fit, you are, intentionally or not, hiring for sameness. You will hire people who “fit in” with you, and you are subjecting them to your affinity bias. This is when you gravitate to hiring people you have something in common with. It may be a cognitive bias, but it is also a blatant prejudice.
Rather than focus on culture fit, focus on culture add. You are still hiring someone who aligns with the values of the organisation, but you are also hiring someone who brings new skills, experiences, perspectives, ideas, and opinions.
You make the shift from conformity to diversity. You can build diversity into teams without losing the benefits of a cohesive culture.
Onboarding
Your remote or distributed culture starts with your onboarding.
GitLab, an all-remote company, describes its onboarding process in detail in its handbook. It starts with a welcome call over Zoom to onboard team members, giving them a chance to meet/socialise and providing an opportunity to ask any lingering questions ahead of their start date. All team members can join the call.
The company assigns onboarding buddies to make the onboarding experience for a new GitLab team member a positive one. It recognises that not every new team member will be used to an all-remote culture and assigns a buddy who is ready, willing, and excited to assist with the onboarding process.
This webpage has details of the buddy responsibilities, guidance for managers to pick a buddy, and an email template for a buddy to introduce themselves.
I am a strong advocate of the buddy system regardless of whether the company is all-remote or not.
Atlassian recommends HR assigns a buddy for new hires.
“As part of your onboarding process, consider a company buddy or mentorship program for new hires in their first few months. This pairs new employees with someone more experienced who can be their point person. Ideally, the buddy isn’t their manager or an HR representative.”
Learning and development
Potential talent will want to know what learning and development you will provide along with career paths.
Again, learning and development are a core part of GitLab’s culture.
“L&D is here to guide team members on their career journey. We strive to foster a culture of learning and development so that GitLab remains a great place to work. When our team members can do their jobs, our customers are happy as a result. This makes everyone at GitLab happy!”
Atlassian has a career framework and growth profiles for engineers. They outline clear role expectations and share how engineers can grow long-term at Atlassian.
“Our career framework:
· Outlines the expectations of each of our engineering roles, allowing engineers to understand and assess how they are performing and to build a career growth plan
· Defines the differences and qualifications of each role and level
· Establishes a career ladder for technical contribution roles, which mirrors our management career ladder”
Summary
Who you hire, how you hire, what you offer, and how you onboard and grow your employees are all integral to a thriving culture in a remote or distributed workforce.
Next
In my next newsletter, I will explore another aspect of the thriving distributed workforce culture.