ProviderTrust has had the honor of being named one of the best places to work by the Nashville Business Journal. In even more exciting news, ProviderTrust will be featured in the 12th annual 2015 Best Places to Work, featured by Pinnacle Financial Partners, in the April 17th edition of the Nashville Business Journal.
Not to toot our own horn but PT has done some very intentional things to help make it one of the best environments to work in, and Dale Clay, one of our beloved team members, spills on the intentional culture created here at PT.
Culture is a funny thing. It is never easy to define, summarize, analyze, explain, buy, sell or make. But it sure is easy to know it when you see it. I joined the ProviderTrust team about 6 months ago and immediately was struck by its strong, positive culture, especially when contrasted with my previous career stops. As a guy who lives in Excel all day working with large sets of data (read “nerd”), I don’t claim to be an expert in culture, but like most people, I know good culture when I see it.
So, here is my incomplete, yet honest, attempt to communicate what makes ProviderTrust so great:
Leadership
In his book Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek argues the best leaders are the ones that sacrificially serve their employees (as opposed to themselves), which creates a safe environment where employees can thrive without wasting energy on self-preservation.
He says, “the true price of leadership is the willingness to place the needs of others above your own. Great leaders truly care about those they are privileged to lead and understand that the true cost of the leadership privilege comes at the expense of self-interest.”
Every employee at ProviderTrust has the utmost confidence that our leaders will make decisions with the employee’s best interest in mind. Not the stakeholders. Not their own bank account. Their employees. It’s amazing how much motivation this gives the team and how much we are able to accomplish knowing our leaders have our backs. All of us have examples of bad leaders, but few of us have the privilege to serve under good leaders. I think that makes us the lucky few.
Work Mates
I’ll be frank here – we are an awesome group of people. I am constantly impressed by the attitude, skill, passion and relational intelligence of my co-workers. It really makes overcoming challenges more fun when you have a positive and supportive team surrounding you. Here are a few qualities you tend to see in our team here:
- Selfless – People are often thinking more about others more than themselves (especially the leaders).
- Passionate – Pretty much no one is ok with the status-quo. We like to do things with excellence and with pride.
- Relatable – Not sure if relatable is the right word, but people here are comfortable expressing their feelings, confronting conflict and building stronger relationships with one-another. It takes work, but hey, what doesn’t?
- Teachable – Everyone, from our most senior engineer to our most lowly intern (you guys rock!), loves to learn. Sometimes it can be difficult to accept feedback from others, but the desire to learn and grow always wins out.
At the end of the day, we like being around each other and we want to see the team and the company thrive. That’s a pretty good deal if you ask me.
Purpose
Our company has 6 values and 6 business practices that drive how our company functions. These aren’t just words on posters on our walls (although they are on posters on our walls), but they actually affect how we treat others and make decisions. I won’t list them all, but they act as a set of criteria against which every action and decision is measured.
Skeptical? I’ll give you an example.
One of our values is “Follow the Conflict Resolution Process” which states that if we have a conflict with someone, we should talk to that person instead of talking about it to everyone else (some people call this gossip). I can’t tell you how many times (ok, at least 20) that I have started writing an email to someone about a conflict I have with someone else. I’ll reach the end of my email (read “venting”), remember this business value, get up and just go talk to the person. So far, 100% of the time, I have quickly and easily worked out my conflict just by talking to the person I had a conflict with. It is often due to a misunderstanding and just required talking it out. Those emails are still sitting in my draft folder as a reminder of how stupid I can be. That’s just one value. We have 12 of these puppies, helping us (especially me) consistently make better decisions.
Oh, and we talk about these values everyday in our company-wide stand up meetings. #justPTthings
There’s probably a lot more I could talk about (like the standing desks, or the dartboard, or the vegetable drawer full of beer, or the viking siren sitting on my desk, or the weekly employee presentations…), but I’ll leave that for another blog post. We’re not perfect (yet), but we sure do try our hardest to be our best.
What more could you ask for?
(catered lunches, please)
Want to work with a team who was nominated for one of the best places to work by the Nashville Business Journal? Check out our
ProviderTrust page.
