The pace of change in the business world has never been greater, which has increased the need for leaders to find ways to create and sustain a strong company culture.
That’s certainly been true for Appian, a McLean, Virginia-based, cloud software company that specializes in low-code technology for application development. Since March 2020, Appian has grown its staff significantly to more than 1,500 team members, even as its workforce shifted to an entirely remote operation. Onboarding employees can be challenging in the best of times as new hires navigate new work cultures, personalities and expectations. During Covid-19, those challenges have become more acute with engagement and personal development taking place without the benefit of face-to-face human connections.
Dawn Mitchell, senior vice president of human resources with Appian, recently shared how the tech leader is fueling a culture of growth, innovation and diversity and inclusion (D&I) during the pandemic.
What has it been like to hire and onboard remotely throughout the pandemic?
Mitchell: From an onboarding perspective, we had a good foundation, a rich three-day orientation program in which we used to fly everybody into headquarters from across the globe. Our creative talent development team quickly pivoted and did a lot of A/B testing when the pandemic hit. They’ve had a good rhythm for what content is working virtually, what isn’t, and they’ve adopted some new technology to try to mimic the in-person element.
We do a deep dive when new hires start to get to know each person, and we share that information in advance with all the participants. It gives you something to go off of more than a cold introduction, and maybe there’s a commonality that could spark a side conversation. We also have an internal site with a calendar of events so people can tap into other groups outside of the people they are going to spend time with day-to-day.
Hiring was easier in some ways because there was always an element of a virtual interview here and there. However, we didn't assume people knew how to do it effectively, so we invested in guides for candidates and hiring managers. We also are mindful of Zoom fatigue and make sure we have the right breaks so that candidates aren't on back-to-back calls for hours.
Once people join Appian, what types of things are you doing to replace or replicate the kind of informal internal development that used to take place within an office setting, where people would learn from others by having a conversation with someone who sits next to them or at the water cooler?
Mitchell: That's the biggest concern because there is so much value in those interactions. We have coordinated new hire groups in Google chat rooms, so they have a space to connect during and after their formal orientation. They have a shared experience, so that's been a nice win.
We also have done some fun virtual happy hours as a way to create those moments of connection that would naturally happen over lunch. Our team has adapted; they just own the awkwardness of it. One of the team members does an amazing game show voice and she sets the tone for rapid-fire questions and then uses breakout rooms to keep it at a pace. The moderators are really important.
What are some other adjustments you've made to support company culture?
Mitchell: Our CEO, Matt Calkins, spent some time improving his cadence of communication with our employees. We had the luxury when we were in the office that he's a very accessible CEO, but when we all went remote, we couldn't have that. Now he has a bi-monthly live stream where he shares what's on his mind, what's important for the business and addresses recent topics.
We keep an open channel between employees and human resources (HR), asking employees what they need instead of assuming we know. As a result of that, we added some virtual tutoring support because we learned our parent population was really affected by the pandemic, and that idea came from them.
We also expanded our parental leave, ensuring that parents and adopting parents have a full 12 weeks and birthing moms have an additional four. You don't have the village you used to have in the past to come and help, and so them being able to be home and not feel they have to ask for additional time off has been helpful.
We also were mindful that employees needed collective days off. There's value in being off when everyone else is off because you're not coming back to an inbox of messages or feeling like you've missed out on something. So, we've done two recharge days as a company.
There has been a marked increase in awareness around diversity and inclusion practices leading to improved business outcomes. How have you seen this play out in your organization?
Mitchell: We work to ensure our managers understand what it means to be an inclusive leader and to ask questions, to check-in and to not be afraid because you may not have the answer. Sometimes you just need to listen and let them know they can circle back to HR.
With our affinity groups, there's a tremendous amount of comfort in being able to connect with employees who have shared experiences. We have seven at this point, and each of them has an executive sponsor and funding. Their programming is really around awareness, community within Appian and outreach externally. We lean a lot on them as another feedback loop. What are you hearing? How are employees feeling? How can we help? They’ve been a value-add to Appian.
Our Talent Acquisition team stood up a new DEI working group that looks to identify opportunities to improve our hiring and operations across the entire hiring process. We've also introduced monthly check points to ensure we're making progress and evaluating the impact to maintain success.
We've also committed to looking outside of our normal pipelines by sourcing from additional diversity talent networks like Fairygodboss, Professional Diversity Network, and Women In Tech International.
How do you help team members feel their work has value/purpose beyond their day-to-day efforts? Why is this important?
Mitchell: What comes to mind is, how do we help them see the value and purpose of their work if they're not seeing the end product? We're trying to do more work there, particularly in engineering, to help them understand the customer experience on the outside. It re-energizes them when they can see the work they are doing is part of this big engine creating a meaningful difference for a specific employee at a specific company.
We have a core value of impact as we think about work. You don't think about doing it to completion, but to impact. That comes through in all of our functional work, but we also really wanted to support our local community.
Three years ago, we partnered with organizations across the globe for a day of service to celebrate hiring our 1,000th employees. One of our employees, Tim Carroll, loved it. But he came to us and said, packing boxes and being a helping hand is great, but I wonder if there’s a way we could apply our expertise and do something more. After some more conversations, our CEO, Matt, greenlit his idea of supporting a local food bank, DC Central Kitchen, and powering them on Appian. The excitement from our employees was really good to see, and it’s wonderful to feel like you're a part of something bigger.
In addition to your core value about impact, Appian has several other unique values, such as a culture of dissent, generosity of spirit and simplicity. Do you hire for those values or do you train to them?
Mitchell: We train to them. We look for elements of talent and success in our hiring. If we think they will transition well into our culture, if they can demonstrate that through our interview process, then we introduce them to our values. We don’t do this in maybe the typical way companies do, with a list of values or a slideshow. We try to live them through our people, our processes and through our communications to employees and in how we represent ourselves externally.
Learn more about careers at Appian.
McLean, Virginia-based Appian Corp. is a global leader across multiple enterprise technology markets, including low-code application development, digital process automation, intelligent business process management systems and dynamic case management.