When Electrum was founded a little over a decade ago, trust, transparency, and teamwork were among the root elements of our DNA. We decided early on to make it part of our culture to actively empower our team to be able to do their best work.
Why place so much focus on building our culture? Well, not only because a healthy culture fuels high-performance workplaces, but also because the people who contribute to the company’s growth and success will thrive. We chatted to Electrum’s Head of Engineering, Zayd Hendricks, about why we work this way.
Electrum: At Electrum, we pride ourselves on creating a high-performance culture - what are some of the ways we do this?
Zayd: We do it by hiring great people. The question we ask ourselves is, “if this person comes and works for us, what value can they add to our culture? Or rather, what will they do to our culture - will they detract from the culture, will they keep it the same, or will they bring a new element to it?”
It’s not about having people that are the same … we don’t look for people who may have the same impact on the culture. We look for people who are confident in being themselves.
There’s no doubt that we’ve got smart people at Electrum, but what distinguishes us is not our IQ. Rather, it’s a considerable focus on emotional intelligence.
Having strong emotional intelligence tells us you can make an impact, because we don’t work in isolation. Life at Electrum is about working with other people and working with customers, so a candidate’s EQ will tell us if they can form and nurture relationships. This distinguishing factor helps Electrum to build teams of people who know how to work with other people, no matter how different they may be.
Electrum: Burnout is a serious matter that a high-performance culture can contribute to, if not managed adequately. How does Electrum avoid this culture affecting employees’ mental health or resulting in burnout?
Zayd: High-performing people have a strong sense of ownership, and that sense of ownership can increase the likelihood of getting burnt out. At Electrum, we cultivate ownership of one’s work, but we also trust our employees to communicate and exercise autonomy when it comes to managing their time and workloads.
Let’s say, for instance, you have been working hard all week, and it is now three o’clock in the afternoon. You can feel that your brain is tired and no longer able to engage. You’re a human being: it happens.
We encourage people to recognise that something like this could contribute to burnout. It would be up to you to make the call to maybe leave a little early to give your mind a break, blow off some steam with a hobby, or catch up on sleep. Whatever you need to reset.
Creating a space that encourages this level of autonomy empowers employees with the freedom to figure out what their limits are and how they can mitigate them (with our support, of course).
However, beyond this trust, we proactively and intentionally make ourselves aware of instances where burnout is possible. By having multiple, relatively small teams within the company, we can stay tuned in with each individual. For example, if someone has been working long hours for days on end, their manager would look into why that is, and offer support that would tilt towards more balance. This could mean reworking soft deadlines and work distribution within the team.
The main thing is being responsible enough to communicate. In such situations, we trust employees to check in with all stakeholders, handover to someone where possible or necessary, and leave their teams in a position to navigate with one less person on board.
For each project or task we work on, we ask ourselves what success would look like at the end of it. And we do this so we can clearly define goals and apply the amount of effort it requires without overexerting ourselves - at the individual level, the team level, and the Electrum-as-a-whole level. This helps with regulating pressure, managing expectations, and setting the foundation for effective planning.
Last but not least, we aim to help employees to discover not only what work they excel at but, perhaps more importantly, what they are passionate about and enjoy. We have learnt, and research backs this up, that doing work you enjoy increases both your productivity and your sense of purpose or accomplishment. That is why we think it is important for each Electrolite’s journey to reflect this.
Electrum: Speaking of trust, Electrum holds two Ts - trust and transparency - in high regard. Why do we approach communication and information-sharing with a culture of transparency? How does it benefit the people who work at Electrum?
Zayd: You can only make good decisions if you have all the information and context you need. As soon as we limit transparency, we rob people of the ability to make the right decisions. The more information we have, the more empowered we are to do our best work.
This means that we can have a high-trust environment where we don’t dictate things that can be addressed through open communication and shared understanding. For example, we have a straightforward leave process. We don’t require employees to fill in forms upon forms before they can take leave. As long as the relevant conversations take place and the right contingencies are implemented, it’s as simple as adding your leave days to your calendar - which everyone can see.
The other thing transparency does is that it keeps everyone on the same page. Collaboration becomes easier, because each team member who hands over the baton on a project does so within a shared context. Rather than having isolated interpretations of the same thing, transparency helps to foster understanding within and between teams.
Electrum: How does this translate into encouraging a working environment that values autonomy?
Zayd: It’s all tied together and it all revolves around trust. You can only operate in a high-trust environment if you have context. And having context means people can take more ownership of their work. This paves the way for Electrolites to self-determine the meaning of productivity and success, in the context of a collaborative team. It’s a delicate balance, but all these pillars form the structure for supporting each other.
Electrum: How has the company’s culture contributed to the growth of some of the engineers in your team?
Zayd: I believe that Electrum creates an equal opportunity for everybody. We have a Team Lead who is a good example of this. They completed their Electrum Internship during university holidays in 2016, and then joined us full-time as a Software Developer in 2018. This person is young, yet they are one of our most impactful Team Leads. Why? Because the moment the opportunity presented itself, they owned it! This Team Lead demonstrated that they could do the job, and they took it and ran with it.
Electrum: How do you go about conveying Electrum’s culture and helping new team members to adjust, especially those who join through our Graduate Programme?
Zayd: It’s hard to teach people culture. You can only demonstrate it and hope they learn from it, and when they go astray, we correct them. We have onboarding sessions that talk about our values, but the practical part is where culture truly sets in.
The Graduate Programme gives new teammates a heavy dose of our culture in one go, at the very beginning of their time with us. Then we lower the doses, increase the focus on autonomy, and they get to own the culture as they progress along their individual journeys. It’s a process that takes time.
Electrum: What’s your favourite part of your typical work day, and why?
Zayd: My favourite part is always the people. They’re the reason why I choose to be in the office every day. I really like the assortment of personalities and ideas we have at Electrum.
Electrum: Thank you for all this insight, Zayd. We have one bonus question: have you ever napped on one of our beanbags? If so, how would you rate the nap quality, on a scale from one to 10?
Zayd: Yes - I rate them ten out of ten for naps, but I am more of a couch guy myself. Give me a couch any day and I’ll have the best nap to reset.
We hope this conversation has given you a glimpse into how we have fostered the culture at Electrum. Our people-first approach, bolstered by a radically transparent and high-trust ethos, has resulted in us growing rapidly over the years. We’re also proud to say it continues to support each Electrolite along their unique career path.
Visit the Electrum Careers page if you’re looking for your next professional chapter and we sound like your kind of workplace!
