Scaling culture as you expand regionally

Scaling culture

theAsianparent Case Study

1- About

2- Culture – what, why?

3- How we built culture

4- CEOs Job

Agenda

About 1

About us

Content, Community platform for parent in Asia Over 6.5 million users monthly Vision is to be a mum’s best friend

Early days • Set up end 2009

• 5 employees by

end 2010

•  Boot strapped

• 1 country

Holy cow! • Took my first vacation a year later •  Team resigned when I was on holidays!

• Cried buckets – tried to figure out what happened • Siloed culture, barriers to collaboration • Picked myself up and decided to focus on HR and Culture

Now • 65 Full-timers, 20 part-timers as of beginning 2015

• 4 countries

• Voted world’s most democratic workplace

• Attrition rate is down

• Most colleagues stay for a minimum of 3 years

Culture – What, why? 2

What is culture?  

The behaviours, beliefs, values, & symbols that a group of people accept, generally without thinking Passed along by communication & imitation

The best investment Often, doesn’t cost a dime! Fosters innovation, finds talent in unexpected places, empowers employees at all levels Increases overall happiness Happiness increases productivity by up to 31%, Sales by 37% and creativity by 3 xs – HBR

How we build culture 3

5 simple steps

Hire right

Communicate

Employee Perks

Team Bonding

Managing across cultures

 Hire right   •  Don’t just focus on personality, but also on skillsets

• Interview aggressively with those skillsets in mind

• Once hired, on board well (Orientation, understand company culture, values, ensure they understand their job, set OKRs)        

Analy'cal  

Wri'ng  

Edi'ng  SEO  

Tech  

Management  Skills  

Integrity    

Direct    

Tenacity  

Editorial  Strategist  Skillset  

Analy'cal  

Wri'ng  

SEO  

Integrity  

Tenacity  

Amanda’s  Skillset  

 Communicate • Daily stand-ups • Internal chat on FB groups, Line and Slack

• Weekly all hands meetings combined with team lunch

• Weekly PPFs

• CEO has coffee daily with 1 random employee  

 Standardized employee perks •  New hire swag (Namecards, Mugs, tote bags, tshirts)

• Free lunches across countries

• Insurance

• Equal number of public holidays

• Helps them feel they are Ticklers first and everything else second      

 Team bonding Yearly retreats (based on departments) • Monthly outings – movies, dinners, drinks, sports, etc

• All festivals all celebrated across offices        

 Managing interculturally   Each department has a Head who is incharge of various local teams. Head of Editorial sits in Philippines Head of Marketing sits in Singapore Head of Analytics sits in India Forces collaboration intercompany and understanding of various cultures      

 My job as CEO

Values of company vs

Values of CEO “Recruiting,

developing, and managing my amazing team across #Asia.”

Thank you