Creating Healthy Working Culture Together
Hi everyone, I’ve decided to start “Medium arch” slowly with something small but this is a thought that I can’t get out of my head for a month now.
When I was writing an article about creating a healthy team culture a year ago I could not imagine that in a year I will be a part of a new team. It’s so interesting to look at things from the other point of view, from the other side of the onboarding process. Previously I’ve been a part of the hiring process of a small team, we hired people for specific needs and haven’t bothered ourselves with far-reaching forecasts. I understood that a person who participates in the hiring process from the employer’s side is not only evaluating the candidate but also represents the whole team. You feel the importance of HR, watching the psychological climate of the company.
They filter the candidates so well that if you pass, you end up in a very suitable atmosphere. Moreover, onboarding is not a responsibility of HR only. On the contrary, I believe that it’s only a beginning. And this was an important lesson for me. While I tried to guide every new team member myself and spread my attention to help them assimilate, I see that this part should be shared with other teammates. I mean, when you arrive at the new place where you will spend most of your time with new people, these people will be a part of your impression. If you get an enormous salary, best conditions but work with boring and rude people, that won’t take you anywhere. Just look at a couple of well-known industry examples full of toxic atmosphere and sexism, and you will get my point better. Moreover, I know several studios where the cost of mistakes is very high, without any second chance. All of these aspects will affect your impression of your daily work in a bad way. You probably can build something good by using people but the price is high and you can end up without qualified employees because of your infamous work environment. And in my new company, I see a great example of “collective onboarding”. The whole team is very supportive, nice, and welcoming. Their dedication to work, their passion, and their combination of great individualities serve as an additional intrinsic motivator, their positive vibes are so contagious. And I can imagine how hard it is for HR in the first place to find such people, how difficult it can be to understand if a person will be a fit for this culture after just a couple of interviews, especially in the corona times.
That is one of the takeaways from my first month in a new place — you can’t pull the whole team culture by yourself, you need to onboard people with a shared understanding of the importance of this mission.
