HR Awards: Whose opinion really matter

We have all heard of them: The famous HR excellence awards that in most cases are random “stamps” that you only have to pay for without showing any sustainable competence.?

So recently I came across one award site that stated that the application for the HR award is free - however - should we win, we would need to pay a 5-figure amount in order to use the award in any comms or websites. That was followed by a huge “LOL” from my side and then I thought “Why should we even care if some panel should decide whether simpleclub is a great employer or not”. We care that our people, our customers, and our community see that and nothing else matters. That’s why I decided on a different approach. Instead of submitting the application to the external panel, we will submit it through this article on Linkedin and it’s up to the “dear gentle reader” to decide whether our answers qualify us as a great employer.?

Future viability: What concrete measures are you taking to make your company more digital and sustainable? You can address processes, tools, and products.

Simpleclub is a remote-only company. Digital processes & tools are inevitable in order to ensure effective alignment and communication. At simpleclub we work with the Google Suite tech stack, use Slack for internal communication, Zapier for all kinds of process automation, Personio & Remote as our HRS including for Onboarding & Offboarding, Miro for all kinds of presentations and initiatives, and monday.com for our project management. We hardly have any manual processes and document all our policies and relevant information on Confluence.?

Employer attractiveness: What do employees expect from you and what do you offer? Discuss benefits, working time models and training, and continuing education measures and give concrete examples.*

When it comes to attractiveness, simpleclub has the benefit that we are in the education sector and are known to have impacted the educational outcome for millions of students & trainees. Many of them later on chose simpleclub as an employer.

Additionally, next to our vision to educate the world, we have the mission to be the best employer in the world. And we are on a very steady path to getting there. First of all, starting with defining an engaging culture.

Part of that culture is recognizing that as humans we are different and have different preferences. Therefore, in anything that we offer our people, we take into consideration flexibility. It starts off by offering flexible working hours and unlimited vacation. The key here is that the flexibility does not come at the expense of the team, or the deliverables. That guidance resulted in an average of 31 vacation days taken by our employees, while we had one of our best years as a company.

Our perks offering does not exclude the flexibility factor. Our people can decide what they use their perks budget for and what fits their lifestyle. It’s a win-win, where the company does not invest in initiatives that are not appealing for everyone and our people feel that they have options that speak to them. As a learning platform, we put our people’s growth as a top priority. Therefore our people have access to a flexible learning platform that allows them to choose any kind of learning method that suits their needs best. From buying books to courses to conferences. We also create a lot of internal trainings that focus on our precise company situations and that include a lot of interactive aspects. We have created trainings starting with building a feedback culture, up to a series of leadership trainings dedicated to all experience levels. Our simple-sessions are a forum where our people learn from each other on all kinds of topics, without having learning as a focus that comes solely from the people team.?

Culture: Describe your corporate and leadership culture in a few sentences. Which values are particularly important to your company and how are these values reflected in daily interactions with one another? Give concrete examples and measures of how you anchor this in your organization.

Simpleclub has a unique culture, where you can see across the board that the people are mission-driven and simply said “kind & respectful” towards one another. Culture-fit / Culture-add is non-negotiable when hiring new people at simpleclub. And to this day either one of our co-founders or both together have a final interview check with candidates to ensure that those candidates stand behind our mission and enrich our company culture. However, it used to be quite difficult to put the culture into words because it was something that was “felt” yet not really documented. This is why we decided a while ago that the time has come to properly describe our culture and define what it means. And this is how our company values came to life. They were created by collecting input from the entire company through surveys, workshops, and feedback rounds.

And here is the result:

• We genuinely care about our community. Decisions are driven by the value we provide to them. That's the key to achieving our mission.
• We go beyond what is thought possible. We constantly push ourselves to become better and faster. We never stop learning to become the best version of ourselves.
• We are a team who lifts each other up with support, open feedback, and respect. Our culture is a space of trust where our differences are our strengths. We are proactive and our word means commitment.
• We love life in all its colors. We are optimists that live and work with passion. That's not a work-life balance. It's a lifestyle.

Those company values have been integrated fully into our hiring and onboarding process and are the base for 360 Development Feedback rounds.

Diversity: What measures does your company take to promote diversity, equal opportunities, and inclusion? Are there any special programs or initiatives in this area?

At simpleclub one of our main aims is, when we do things,? we do them right. We approach DEI as an integral part of our culture and not something we want to show off on Linkedin. Especially that we’re still not near where we want to be and what we have ahead of us. If we just take hard facts, being a remote company allows us to hire people everywhere in the world, and partnering with remote.com (an Employment of Record provider) has made this easier for us. Additionally, every individual in the company knows what their salary band and job level is, so that not only the “loud” people benefit from higher pay. Especially since studies show, that women and minority groups are less likely to negotiate their salaries. We know that this is an uncomfortable topic for a lot of people and by that transparency, everyone in the company knows what they should be paid.?

We continuously work with data to have a clear view of measurable diversity indicators, which makes deciding for initiatives a lot easier.

In the leadership team, we continuously discuss how we can take continuous action to make our culture more inclusive and see that this is the right path to have more diversity as a result. Recently we have launched a company-wide survey to ask all our people about how included they feel and what things they believe we do well and what we need to get better at. That feedback will be our foundation on tackling that extremely important topic and taking initiatives based on our people’s feedback and not only what we the people team believe is the right thing.?

So.. “dear gentle reader” you can decide on the verdict based on what you read.. If you think that simpleclub is a place where you can see yourself thrive, have a look at our career page https://simpleclub.com/careers