I don’t really know exactly what makes a place great to work at, at least on paper. To be clear, I do consider Great Expectations a great place to work—but until writing this I never really thought about why. What I know for sure is that I can’t describe why I love this place by rattling off a list of buzzwords.
Yes, GX hits all the important points around competitive compensation packages, support for work/life balance, a meaningful mission, a healthy company culture, and a boss that really appreciates you. But even organizations that get those things right can still struggle to be considered a great place to work.
Thinking it through, I believe it’s because all those factors are actually just a prerequisite for creating a great work environment. Here’s how I think GX does it.
We focus on the experience
We try to look at everything in terms of the experience—the feelings associated with the journey of getting where we’re going. We talk about product experience, company experience, and our own individual experiences as team members.
Our focus on experience makes GX a great place to work because when we make decisions, we don’t just think about where we’ll end up. We consider how the process is going to feel.
For example: employee onboarding. It has a lot of parts, starting at the very beginning with a job offer, continues through logistics and welcome communications, and supports them through their first weeks at the company.
Starting a new job is often exciting and nerve-wracking. You’ve been invited to contribute your skills to something that you (hopefully) connect with. But you also need to meet a lot of new people, build a lot of new relationships, and learn new social norms and workplace processes.
So at GX, we regularly ask ourselves: with new hires in that complicated emotional space, how can we make our onboarding process not just functional, but genuinely enjoyable? How can we make sure they feel comfortable asking questions?
I love how much we focus on experience across the organization. We’re always talking about ways to improve a given experience, which makes GX a great place to work.
We celebrate often
As I write this, my calendar tells me I have two team celebrations in the next 48 hours—one to recognize everyone who was promoted in 2022, and the other is an Operations team get-together to celebrate this year’s accomplishments.
In our Slack channels, there are plenty of hearts, smiles, and GX logo emojis on posts about all kinds of topics, from customer feedback to each others’ vacation photos.
That’s a pretty typical day at GX. In our company-wide meetings, members of the leadership team will often stop mid-update to specifically take a moment to recognize an achievement before getting back to the problem at hand.
This environment of regular celebration shapes our daily work lives. Even in mundane conversations, we show gratitude and appreciation for ourselves and each other.
I need to stop and remind myself how lucky I am to be able to say that.
Perhaps the best part is that when I sign off at the end of the day, I carry this attitude into my personal life, which makes me a better husband, uncle, son, brother, and friend.
We really take self-critiquing seriously
The culture at GX has taught me more than anything else that self-critique is an important and positive part of growth. Though we celebrate often, at GX we also actively cultivate an environment where everyone feels safe pointing out shortcomings in our organization and our processes.
One thing that’s stood out to me ever since my first company-wide meeting at GX is that our leadership team is more than willing to talk about the ways we have fallen short of our hopes and how we’re working to improve ourselves.
What’s impressed me most, though, is how frequently team members will chime in with questions, suggestions, and respectful critiques. It truly demonstrates that an organization can have safe and healthy communication around tough subjects.
It’s worth clarifying that there’s a reason I didn’t say “we really take self-improvement seriously.” Of course, we want to turn our self-critiquing into a net improvement—and we do. But it’s easy to talk publicly about improvement while skimming over what, exactly, needs improving. What impresses me so much at GX is that we’ve intentionally developed a culture that openly talks through challenging topics in a respectful and transparent manner.
A culture can’t stay great if it stagnates. GX’s commitment to self-critique helps to ensure that GX stays a great place to work.
Our commitment to the GX team
I think everyone here realizes that we can’t take ‘being a great place to work’ for granted, and the journey has been far from perfect. But one thing is certain: our commitment to maintaining GX as a great place to work has never been stronger.
If anything I’ve said resonates with you, check out our open positions: we’re hiring at jobs.greatexpectations.io!
Gregory Cardaci is a people operations generalist at GX.
