At Axelerant, I like those little things such as how termination is an exceptional situation, benefits might be reimbursable to prevent abuse, having specialist roles versus managers, eliminating trial hire by having better onboarding, and other aspects of work have their worthiness debated.
However, people don’t like regular change. And comments such as, “I’ll ignore the update because it’s just going to change in a month,” I now consider as apathy.
For Axelerant to be the innovative, joyful people-centric place it is, there are a lot of conversations, feedback, and iterations taking place to make it happen. Which means, change happens.
For example, our people management group, what others might call human resources, have to be proactive in what we do. Because by the time we respond to a situation, it might not be recoverable. Such that we’ve lost the chance to help people better understand that we’re here to support them and ensure they have a stable career ahead of them.
Alternately, in new hire salary talks, they’re not much of negotiation anymore. We share the salary bracket, let people know where we consider their fit amongst peers here and say X is what we’re offering.
When the potential new hire balks and demands much more, I calmly respond with that’s wonderful, and you’ll get that eventually. However, out of fairness to the people here, what we’re offering is the best we can do at the moment, and it’s okay that they say no to joining us.
Talk about shocking disbelief on a person’s face; being told we want them yet willing to let them go.
And, from those salary conversations about when a pay increment might happen, us realizing that annual appraisals are not as fair as we once thought they were—yet another aspect of potential change.
Therefore, change is how Axelerant beats the status quo, and team members should be a part of their conversations, feedback, and iterations than complainers.
Peimic 