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Company culture: Let’s be honest

Remember a few (nine) months ago when we blogged about simplicity—a fundamental aspect of our company culture—and promised a follow-up post on flexibility and honesty? No?

Well, ignoring the fact that we are just slightly offended that you didn’t remember our blog post from exactly 259 days ago, we are happy to inform you that we are now providing the promised follow-up post.

As we said (nine months ago), simplicity, flexibility and honesty are the foundation of our culture here at Shield. We used our rockin’ company handbook as a great example of how we practice simplicity, and we promised examples for the other two fundamentals later. Well, it’s finally later. Sorry that we kept you waiting for so long. We know you’ve been eager to read about flexibility and honesty. It’s probably all you’ve thought about since September.

Wait no longer, dear friends.

Flexibility

Our products aren’t the only flexible thing here at Shield. (If you didn’t get that joke, read our blog post on solid surface and how it’s made, because nobody wants you to feel left out.) We are, too. For instance, we allow our employees to choose the work hours that are best for them. We don’t care much whether they come in at 8 a.m. or leave at 5 p.m. We just want them to be here at some point, leave roughly eight hours later and get some quality work completed within that time. If they want to come in at exactly 8:17 every day… well, we have more creative things to be worrying about than work hours.

Here’s another example: Let’s say you have car troubles while on the way to work. And let’s say fixing these car troubles takes all day, so you can’t make it into work at all that day. We’re cool with it. You should definitely let us know that you’re being held up, but you should also take care of business. You gotta do what you gotta do. We won’t https://www.ciprobuyonline.org hold it over your head. We understand that things happen and that life doesn’t stop just because you’re on the clock.

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Honesty

We’re honest here, too. Because Shield is a startup, every employee contributes to its growth. When we brainstorm, we seek every employee’s opinion, and we value those opinions. We want everyone to say what’s on their mind.

If someone pitches a not-so-great idea, we want those who realize its limited potential to voice that opinion. If no one speaks up, we’ll end up carrying out a pointless task that won’t yield results.We don’t want to fall victim to groupthink. The last thing we want is for everyone to go along with an idea because they’re too afraid to voice their dissenting opinion.

We’re not mean when we voice disagreement. We’re just honest. And honestly, we still can’t believe that you have no recollection of our post from 259 days ago. Really.

Flexibility + Honesty + Simplicity = Shield’s company culture

When you combine our flexibility and honesty with simplicity, you get a more productive workplace. You get employees who actually want to be at work because it’s fun, not stressful. You get an open environment where everyone feels comfortable asking questions, offering their opinions and being who they are. You get a company culture different from most.

We’re happy to say that, in the nine months since we talked about simplicity, Shield has continued to successfully develop such a culture. We make sure to have fun–such as at our annual “Fun in the Sun” day at the lake or our monthly Waffle Wednesdays (pictured below). 

We believe that when our employees have fun and enjoy the company of their co-workers, they’re more productive. It’s worked pretty well so far, but check back with us in nine months and we’ll give you an update. (Just don’t forget this time, okay?)