How culture can help you scale the company globally
EverestEngineering was founded as an Indian/Australian organization in October 2018 to create better, more global options for remote and distributed technical delivery teams. The company has partnered with over 60 customers, including early-stage startups, mid-sized enterprises, and mature software product companies across various industries. Everest has built a highly skilled workforce of over 220 people
across India, Australia, and Malaysia. The company believes in creating technology that changes the world and positively impacts people's lives.
Everest places a lot of focus on the culture, which gets created with a balance of people, clients, business and the community. The company makes four promises 1.) Team: We create a great place to work—interesting and varied work and a place to learn and grow supported by the people around you. 2.) Customers: We deliver excellent outcomes that help them achieve their business goals and feel like it's an incredible journey, working and learning together. 3.) Company: We offer our values of longevity and integrity. 4.) Community: We contribute to the world we live in to leave things a little better by being in it. We can start by contributing to our industry by sharing experiences and knowledge, but we hope to do more over time.
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Ranganathan, the co-founder/CTO, says with all the remote working, companies should try to start remote first and global first. It gives a strategic advantage to working with diverse people and helps in global hiring. The expectations of quality also go higher. Employees will have international peers, which enables them to learn better. The first question that comes is timezone. It is a more straightforward question to solve if you have the right processes and minimal everyday overlap. The harder one is how do you build a more global culture?
Ranganathan says, "global presence means a few more expectations." First, it must be very inclusive and encourage diversity. Then the tools should be enabled for global needs. Tools should be chosen to support the international teams to collaborate better. Also, A few systems, like finance, need local compliance. Have policies which are global first and have local customizations. Hybrid workspaces help people work remotely and have a local community connection. Create platforms for promoting regional and global ideas. Another point is to ensure it is not a headquarters-driven company. Cross-culturally empathetic leadership is also key to building great teams.
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Unlike working in assembly lines, where the team is in proximity and the ways of working are relatively straightforward to understand, knowledge workers with a global workforce need to be more transparent and explicit about their ways of working. A global team does not mean more meetings at odd times. Teams need to agree on ways of working and commit to that. At regular intervals, they should look at ways to improve the ways of working. With global teams, it is essential to have processes in place so that the teams are not just transactional. They need to build healthy relationships with peers working worldwide and remotely.
Global company means global culture. With most people working remotely and coming to the office as required, it becomes easier to be explicit about global values. That, along with good global policies and calling out right behaviours, helps build a better global culture. A good onboarding process is a nice opportunity to set expectations. A well-established culture with a people-first approach is a good way to go and build a global company.
