This was the challenge Valiantys has accomplished since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. We are GPTW certified for the 2nd time in the category of companies with 50 to 250 employees. Last November, all employees anonymously responded to the Great Place To Work Trust Index, which surveyed our employees’ feelings about their experience with the company. 95% of employees consider Valiantys a great place to work.
We wanted to share with you the Valiantys’ recipe for achieving this certification in a unique context. A year ago, the Covid-19 pandemic plunged the world into a multi-week lockdown. Most companies had to choose between putting their employees on short-term/technical leave or telecommuting. At Valiantys, agility and digital work are in our DNA, thanks to Atlassian tools. Indeed, long before the pandemic started, Valiantys already had the resources to support its customers remotely. It was, therefore, quite easy to switch all its teams to home offices. From one day to the next, employees, teams, departments, and the whole company organized to continue to carry out their missions. Of course, this has changed our collaborative practices and office life; meeting for lunch or simply chatting between two doors for a tea or a drink after work was no longer possible. But month after month, we have strengthened our agility and continued to collaborate remotely by promoting home offices for all employees thanks to Jira and Confluence.
So how do you create a remote corporate culture? Discover our company values and the ingredients that worked at Valiantys:
1. Organize highlights
2. Adopt management based on trust
3. Recruit members who share the company’s values
4. Integrate new members
5. Train employees
"Creating a remote corporate culture is important at Valiantys because it links directly to our value of “being mindful of what matters." We already knew that life adapts to work, but working from home has proven that the opposite is also true. We want to make sure we have the same experience whether we're in the office or remote, and we're using our creativity to make that happen."
1. Organize highlights
We encourage interaction between employees. These can range from sharing a coffee before starting the day or celebrating specific events. For example, to celebrate the end of the year 2020, we organized a virtual Escape game that brought together employees from around the world. Finally, the Valiantys team is growing faster and faster, and it can be difficult to create a bond between people when working remotely. Our HR team organizes Virtual Hot Desking by randomly assigning colleagues from different countries to get to know each other informally over a coffee break or a beer.
2. Adopt management based on trust
When you manage a whole team remotely, it is important to nurture a trusting relationship with each of them. You have to know how to balance autonomy and control. Jira allows our teams to collaborate remotely and allows managers to follow the work of their teams. Finally, our strong culture of the right to make mistakes is beneficial to us in these times of integration and commitment to remote teams. We know how to be attentive, tolerant, and compassionate when necessary.
3. Recruit members who share the company’s values
At Valiantys, we collaborate around 5 values: talk straight, never stand still, be mindful of what matters, make every interaction remarkable, and share and take part. Our hiring actions with candidates, internal practices with employees, and external practices with clients are based on these values. Our goal? To create a company culture in which each employee recognizes themselves (this is important when we spend a good part of our time working) and to create a relationship of trust with each of our clients (some of our consultants spend more time with their clients than in our offices).
4. Integrate new members
The onboarding of a new employee should not be left behind, especially when working remotely. At Valiantys, we have integrated more than 65 new employees since the first lockdown in 2020. The first day of a new employee is intense for them with a lot of information to remember. That’s why on their first day, the computer equipment is shipped to their home and ready to be used, and an onboarding process is presented before their arrival. Our invaluable Confluence wiki and intranet are full of information to help them understand the company, its organization, processes, and various tools. Each member introduces themselves on our internal blog in Confluence. Are you a fan of rock, hiking, or video games? The idea is to share your passions to start bonding with your new colleagues.
5. Train your employees
As a player in digital transformation, we know how important it is to continuously train to remain at the forefront of new technologies, support our customers, and, above all, allow each employee to grow throughout their experience at Valiantys. In particular, we have created a partnership with Linkedin Learning to give our employees the opportunity to update their skills and progress in their careers on a continuous basis.
Join Valiantys
The list of actions that we carry out could be complete at this point, but we wanted to present, most of all, the heart of our initiatives. Our collaboration revolves around two central tools that we use daily: Confluence, our intranet and wiki that allows us to manage all the knowledge within Valiantys, and Jira, our tool that allows us to track our projects and tasks in an agile way. We are proud to receive the Great Place To Work certification, and we are committed to the long-term well-being of our team.
When you join Valiantys, you’ll be part of an inspiring team with whom you’ll meet challenges and share good times. And good news, we are recruiting!
