Work Culture

An equal field

In the largely male dominated IT sector, ThoughtWorks Technologies is targeting to achieve a 50:50 male-female employee ratio. Renuka Vembu finds out more of such unique initiatives by the company

ThoughtWorks Technologies was founded with the concept of being a home for the best knowledge workers in the world and it has been functioning at the behest of this guiding principle for the last 15 years. Employees who join the organization are talented individuals who share the company’s values and corporate culture by means of which they can learn, flourish and collaborate with other individuals. This results in a globally connected community mutually built on trust, respect and transparency in communication. Matthew Simons, Chief People Officer, ThoughtWorks Technologies, said, “People who join this community learn constantly—not only about the work that they do but about the world we all live in and how to use their talents to create a better world. This community, more akin to family than colleagues, is our fundamental and lasting differentiator.”

The company supports a broad agenda of progressive change in both the industry and the outside world. It has a ThoughtWorks University programme which is used to pool in fresh talent, inducting graduates into the company. The aim here is to achieve equality, targeting a 50:50 ratio of men and women globally, which is largely lacking in the male dominated technical sector. They strongly believe that the IT industry is impoverished by the lack of women and this year are on the verge of taking in more than 50 young women into careers at ThoughtWorks via this programme. They hope to double this number next year taking forward their mission and practice.

Simons continued, “One of our core values is to build a transnational team. To support this value, we encourage as many of our employees as possible, at every level, to go, live and work outside of their home country. Our Exchange Programme is one of the mechanisms that helps us accomplish this goal. It provides support to employees and their dependants who are interested in being a part of the ThoughtWorks team in another country for a short period of time. Currently over 50 percent of our professional services people have at some point in their career worked outside their home country. We are convinced that this makes us a better company by helping us cross-pollinate innovation and best-practices and keeping us connected via many personal relationships and networks.”

Company values and employee benefits

The company’s business backdrop and prime focus on its workforce are laid down in their seven core values:

• Customer commitment: delighting the customers
• Social responsibility: creating a better world
• Uncompromising principles: respect, humility and openness
• Best people: an exceptional community
• Fun: have fun, be passionate
• Entrepreneurialism: imagine and pursue
• Global: transnational team

They have consciously excluded ‘maximizing shareholder returns’ from their core values because the company, its management and its people are strongly of the opinion that it leads to a destructive short-term focus, ultimately resulting in moral bankruptcy with no soul enrichment.

The company essentially functions on the basic principle of trust having no hierarchical ladder as it more often than not evokes fear rather than building mutual respect. It places the onus on its taskforce to manage their time and activities to get the best results. Instead of fixed working hours, teams and individuals are given the space to work out optimum schedules based on personal preferences, and customer and team requirements. Their review process is also driven primarily by peer-feedback, which encourages teams to take up responsibility for their results and improve their performance. This sidelines the manager from making judgements as he is not an intrinsic part of the team and stands uninvolved in its day-to-day operations.

Privilege to the ThoughtWorkers

• Rejuvenation leave: one month additional paid leave after completing four years
• Sabbatical leave: three months paid leave after completing 10 years
• Car pooling: community-based ride-sharing for commuters
• Conference attendance: sponsoring for employees who attend or speak at conferences worldwide
• Innovation hot seat: people who come up with innovative ideas are offered a break from their routine work for a period of one month. This allows them to develop their ideas and take it forward to the next level

The organization is of the view that these employee friendly benefits and policies, coupled with the flat chain-in-command and strong value system, has enabled it to retain an attrition rate of below 10 percent for the last three years.

Home for the best

Since their fundamental purpose is to be a home for the best knowledge workers in the world, ThoughtWorks invests an enormous amount of time, energy and capital on attracting and selecting new people into the organization. All candidates must clear a CV screening followed by a telephone interview, a code test for developers, a battery of assessments measuring their mental capacity, an evaluation of their working style and lastly, interviews by senior people of the organization. Simons added, “It is a time-consuming process, but the competitive market environment puts a great deal of stress on this process and curbs the temptation to cut corners and make exceptions. This calls for uncompromised quality in business.”

Extensive training

All new hires receive extensive induction training. Any graduate hired in any part of the world comes to India for a six-week training programme called ThoughtWorks University. This is a highly interactive and challenging course that prepares the new entrants into the IT industry for careers as international IT consultants. Any experienced candidate recruited comes to India for a two-week immersion programme that introduces key elements of ThoughtWorks’ value proposition and engagement model. The company advocates that the benefits of both of these programmes for the participants extend far beyond the course material—they allow attendees to build their global ThoughtWorks network that will help them keep in touch with colleagues around the world during their career with the firm.

After induction, training is also delivered on a more personalized basis to help employees build the skill-sets that they need to be adept with, in order to fit their job profile and take their careers in the direction of their liking. The organization supports growth that takes people either broad (to become generalists) or deep (to become specialists). It offers both internal and external training as well as options to attend conferences, mentoring, and self-study to support individualized career development.

Developing leaders

As a growing business, the company is constantly on the look out for new leaders who will step up, take initiative, and have the required focus, aptitude and the correct attitude to drive the business forward. To ensure that there is continuous and healthy pipeline of leaders, the company has invested in a comprehensive and personalized leadership development programme. This activity pairs prospective leaders and highly talented individuals with existing leaders who act as their coach. These prospective coaches help the budding leaders solicit and interpret regular 360 degree feedback and other developmental assessments. They also promote their assignees and ensure that they have the right assignments and opportunities to realize their potential.

The company has a clear framework that articulates the role of every employee based on their set of capabilities and their ability to master certain key functional areas. Training is designed to support and supplement growth in areas required for career development. Every employee has a personal career coach to help them understand their own level of talent, their desired role with the organization and clarify their queries about aspirations for future growth and development. Roles thus drive staffing assignments, which provide ample opportunities to exercise the new skills in practice.

Simons explained, “At present, our corporate focus is on ensuring we do all we can to redress historic discrimination by providing opportunities to people who have not traditionally been given them, like taking women or African Americans into IT. Over the long-term, we have a strong desire to find ways to allow our people to apply their talents to help socially progressive organizations that work for the common good.” Though the company presently does not have any formal programme or policy on the impending issue of taking up the CSR initiative on a continued basis, there are active grass-roots groups of ThoughtWorkers who organize service activities which calls for voluntary participation.

Keeping in view the company’s chainless level of command, there has been hardly any pressing need to bridge the gap between hierarchies as they are virtually non-existent. Simons felt that more than ‘hierarchy on paper’ it was ‘hierarchy in behavior’ that need to be avoided at all costs. He stated, “We demand humility of all of our leaders and nurture a culture of servant leadership. We find this is enough to allow us to put in place the structures that make it possible to support a multi-national business without creating the hierarchical behavior that saps the vital energy from majority of employees of many organizations.”

Friendly activities

The presence of a homely ambience makes all ThoughtWorkers feel like one big family. Families are welcomed and encouraged to become a part of the larger ThoughtWorks team via events like annual Family Day and other social get-togethers. Simons’ words summed up the entire experience, “Personally as a leader, nothing is more humbling and rewarding than to meet the spouses and children of our people and hear them talk about how pleased they are that ‘their ThoughtWorker’ has found a place that keeps them so engaged, energized and happy. In my view, there is really no higher praise.”