The Way of DOCOsoft – Company Culture in an InsurTech SME

What is company culture?

The culture of a company is generally referred to as how we do things around here. At DOCOsoft, we pride ourselves on our culture, a reason of which many of our clients enjoy working with us. Company culture is significant to both the business in general, as well as the employees within the business. Employees want to feel as though they belong somewhere – in a place where we spend most of our time, it is important to feel like we can connect. Employees want to believe that their values and what they deem as important to them, are the same values and aspects their company possesses. When this isn’t the case – it is often a significant factor for employees leaving their job.

Challenges

There are a lot of challenges surrounding culture in a company. One of the major challenges is getting buy in from everyone – from the top down. You can’t have an environment where, for example, there is an open plan office where everybody talks to each other face to face and rarely uses emails internally, but then the CEO only communicates with people through email only – the culture needs to be consistent. In one of my past positions, we were trying to implement a culture of familiarity and friendliness. It was a very large company; the lifts would be full throughout the day and nobody spoke to each other in these lifts. We decided to put signs inside saying, ‘Talk to each other, ask “how was your day?”, in an attempt to encourage conversation inside the lifts. These were successful, as people began to communicate with their fellow lift passengers. However, this was short-lived, as executive staff chose not to partake, and continued to not speak to employees outside of meetings. Nothing works to full effectiveness unless you have senior management partaking. Another challenge involves creating company culture within a diverse workforce.

The Way of DOCOsoft

In DOCOsoft we have one fundamental theme; the beauty of a small-medium business, everyone sees the fruits of their labour. While we have distinct cultures between the Dublin and London offices, there are similar themes that run between the two. Everyone within DOCOsoft contribute to many things outside of what would be considered the norm for their role, we spread our expertise over several areas. Because of this, everyone is aware of our wins and these wins are collectively celebrated. There is a willingness to work hard as there is the desire for company success. Similarly, as a result of being a smaller business, there is a theme of family and loyalty. As we grow, it may become increasingly difficult to ensure this aspect of our culture remains, but we will certainly try our best to maintain it! Saying thank you to people for a job well done is a crucial part of our culture. Employees want to feel appreciated and valued and this appreciation truly fosters the culture at DOCOsoft.

Steps in continuing DOCOsoft’s great culture

We are coming to an interesting stage in the company’s life where we are expanding quite rapidly. It will be interesting to see the impact of this on our current culture. We have implemented several things to assist with this during this stage. One of these initiatives involved identifying cultural ambassadors. These ambassadors are employees who live and breathe the culture. They are your eyes and ears and can tell you if people are unhappy about a certain email that went out to the company, excited about a new initiative, uninformed about an upcoming event and so on. These people also lead by example, they are the employees who are role models when new initiatives are implemented. Our culture will continue to revolve a lot around creating opportunities for people to be together, things like nights out, picnics, lunches, etc. Whatever the future may bring, we will strive to maintain our DOCOsoft culture!