The Company Value of Being True to Ourselves and Others

In the age when trends like the Great Resignation are making headlines, it can be prudent to ask, “What makes people stick around”? More often than not, it is because employees believe that the organization remains true to its values and these values are conducive not only to organizational growth, but individual growth.

The focus on values increases as traditional, machine-like, authoritarian organizational structures are now a thing of the past.

The world of work today is global, flexible, and agile, the organizational value system has to resonate the same. However, ‘organizational values’ are not amorphous, good-to-have concepts. These rather, are verbs – the figures of speech that show action.

At Verinite, we have a strong set of values that define how we guide decisions, execute work, interact with each other, and grow our business. Our values are based on the principle of being true to ourselves. Here is what values mean to us and how we demonstrate them in action.

Integrity – to build a culture of trust.

Integrity is undoubtedly the stepping-stone to success and extends beyond just keeping the intellectual property of the organization safe. Integrity is highly valued in Verinite and means that we uphold high moral standards and do the right thing – even when no one is looking.

For us integrity is not just an emotion but a manner in which we operate. It is a valuable tool that builds psychologically safe spaces and helps our company build a culture of trust and openness.

 

Integrity in action

Living integrity as an organization value asks us to demonstrate the following actions:

• Respect for time – that of ourselves and that of others.
• Clear, respectful, and timely communications across all teams and levels, irrespective of hierarchies.
• Ensuring that commitments are fulfilled.  
• High levels of self-awareness to do right by oneself and others.
• Flexible mindset that allows one to learn from real-life experiences and go beyond espoused beliefs.

 

Accountability – drives organizational growth.

We credit most of the success and growth of Verinite to the value of ‘accountability’. Accountability, for us, is an umbrella term that also encompasses the key values of responsibility and ownership.

Accountability is an important organizational trait that has been woven into our organizational DNA and reflects in the manner in which all employees and leaders conduct themselves across teams.

It means that we are more empathetic to others and are more solution-driven and creative problem solvers. It also involves being mature about successes and failures and owning up to mistakes.  Accountability encourages us to ask, “Have I done everything to solve this problem?” and “Can I contribute even though this task doesn’t fall within my purview but contributes to the team/organization’s benefit?”

This means recognizing that we are part of a greater whole and understanding that each cog plays an essential role in turning the wheel.

Accountability in action

We see accountability in action in the following ways in Verinite:

• Self-driven, emotionally mature, highly self-aware workforce that operates without reminders and follow-ups.
• Proactive performance management that aids pre-emptive course correction.
• Performance-driven (and not a hierarchy-driven) structure that rewards results more than tenure.
• Solution-driven, helpful, and empathetic teams that promote accountability and ownership.

Respect – that builds a meritorious and psychologically safe environment.

Success and respect are two sides of the same coin – one cannot exist without the other in our work environment. We recognize it is our people who make up our success and, as such, deeply respect every individual and the technical and critical skills that they bring to the table.

Respect is not role-specific. It is for every individual who operates in our organizational ecosystem, irrespective of their role, designation, or where they stand on the hierarchy pyramid. We are also deeply committed to inclusion and diversity and believe that more perspectives drive better team and organizational outcomes.

However, respect does not mean blind allegiance or blanket agreements. We believe in honoring differences of opinion and understand that agreement is not always a good thing. For innovation and creativity, there must be space to disagree. However, we ensure that disagreements do not mean disrespect.

Respect in action

We live the value of respect by doing the following things:

• Ensure disagreements are based on facts and are communicated with clarity and within professional boundaries.
• Feedback and concerns are shared with empathy and compassion.
• Understanding that conflict and disagreements are not personal attacks but essential for growth and innovation.
• Accommodating conflicting styles, views, and approaches and working on discovering a middle path.
• Giving all ideas a seat at the table, keeping an open mind for new ideas and thoughts, and acknowledging the contribution of others.
• Never resorting to hurtful or insulting communication strategies, even in jest.
• Treating everyone, irrespective of hierarchy, designation, or team with the same respect as we afford to ourselves.

Continuous Learning and Resourcefulness– to drive innovation and competitiveness.

We believe in being resourceful and doing more with less. Our objective is to build a culture that is constantly evolving to accommodate the dynamic needs of today’s business environment.

For this, we have created flexible organizational structures and agile teams. We believe that continuous improvement is essential to building organizations that want to remain successful and competitive in today’s complex and dynamic business environment.

Continuous Learning and Resourcefulness in action

The Verinite workforce is extremely resourceful and drives competitiveness by:

• Proactively monitoring their work and identifying areas of improvement – be it process, operational, or individual productivity.
• Creating air-tight and comprehensive feedback mechanisms to drive personal and organizational growth.
• Focusing on continuous learning and creating learning opportunities for the workforce beyond classroom and training sessions.
• Robust mentoring and open-door policies that encourage help-seeking and promote learning.
• Building systems that expand tribal knowledge and facilitate knowledge-sharing across the organization and build ecosystems that aid problem-solving, learning, and growth.
• Enabling people with training, upskilling, and mentoring opportunities across domains and technologies.

Customer Delight – to lead great business outcomes

One of our core values is to deliver exceptional customer experiences that lead to customer delight. While this means that projects are completed as per the deliverables listed, it involves identifying key things that create unforgettable experiences for the clients.

We recognize that today’s customers need more than loaded features and functionalities or good, competitive prices. They want their partners to have an innate understanding of their needs, market direction, and future technology and market evolutions.

When we talk of customers, we do not just mean our clients. It involves our workforce, and our internal customers as well.

Customer delight in action

To move from customer service to customer delight we ensure that we:

• Understand customer pain points and challenges to create impactful solutions.
• Identify ways to preempt client needs and deliver future-ready solutions.
• Display empathy and compassion towards client and employee challenges and have a proactive, solution-driven approach to address these.
• Promote ideas and enable initiatives that have a strong customer impact.
• Open and timely communication that drives transparency and trust.
• Focus on educating the customer rather than on playing the blame game in tough or challenging situations.
• Being open and transparent about challenges, roadblocks, and possible points of failure and having clear mitigation plans to resolve these.

Clear communication and positivity are two other values that uphold the value architecture of our organization. Without these, we cannot create a high-performing, enthusiastic, and enriching workplace. A workplace that communicates, timely, honestly, and transparently with their internal and external clients builds psychological trust amongst those operating within this ecosystem. This leads to more positive experiences even when the situation could be otherwise. By making sure that we communicate transparently and timely, we ensure that our teams have the support they need to solve problems and pivot.

We prize empathy and compassion and give credence to celebrating personal events and successes just as we celebrate organizational wins. We are proud that the culture of Verinite drives belonging in the workplace and ensures that when tough times strike or doubt clouds our minds, our values steer the path and take us toward sustained success.