Matt Handford works at Hootsuite, a social media management platform with over 16 million users worldwide.
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What’s something about Hootsuite’s culture that you’re particularly proud of?
We work hard to give people stretch opportunities and chances to expand their skills and we are often providing employees a chance to take on bigger roles sooner than they would in other organizations.
Disruption is at the heart of Hootsuite’s internal culture. How do you keep that culture of disruption alive now that Hootsuite is maturing as a company?
One of our values is "build a better way" and I think the organization is good at experimenting and trying new things as pilot projects, which allows us to innovate without creating high risk. For example, our Random Coffee app started as an experiment.
How do you encourage ongoing learning and development for your teams?
We are building a learning community, which is focused on the idea that everybody is both a teacher and a learner. While we have a team that provides internal learning experiences and courses, we are growing content from the entire organization. We want the learning experiences to happen throughout the organization by diverse 'experts' and we are trying to build the attitude that growth is a continual practice.
Culture is obviously more than just perks, but have you found that Hootsuite’s robust perk program does have an impact on internal culture?
Every organization offers perks and benefits but our focus is more on creating a meaningful employee experience. It's the connections they make, the learning opportunities to stretch beyond their current capabilities, the chance to help build a diverse organization, and make an impact in their role.
Hootsuite values trust and freedom for its employees; how do you foster an environment that empowers employees to make decisions for themselves and take ownership of their work?
"Build a better way" encourages people to continuously improve what and how they are having an impact in the organization. We created a program called Cadence, which helps managers and employees have regular conversations on performance. We have tried to give employees the control on how those meetings happen and what gets talked about so we ensure they get what they need to excel in their role.
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