Every organisation is battling to build a healthy culture and define its own values, interests, priorities, find the right people. All these elements merge and supplement each other shaping the company’s climate — in other words, the work culture.

How do we know whether the company is “healthy”?

We asked our co-founder Roman to think about what a healthy company is. In this story, he shares his findings on the-healthy-company goals and values, and what we’ve learned after two decades of building and developing our own.

What does a healthy company mean to you?

– I can’t identify whether a company is healthy or «sick». There are just different companies. They attract people who are comfortable with those companies whether the company is competitive and aggressive or humane and caring. There are also different types of people that are comfortable with specific types of company’s mindset. Each organisation has its own way, so it’s impossible to copy the company’s “pattern”. We have chosen our path or, it’s better to say, the path has chosen us (laughs).

My partner Pavlo and I are just who we are. We have strong values and beliefs. We build the company from the heart, without reinventing the wheel. The main criterion for us is to continually ask ourselves if our actions are fair or not, and how I would like the management to deal with me if I were an employee.

As a co-founder and a former chief design officer of the company, I’ve had hundreds, if not thousands, of interviews, and the obvious truth about all of us — we’re all totally different and unique. We all have values. I believe a healthy company must be able to attract and, more importantly, retain all the unique individuals together, maintaining similar values and creating synergy across the organisation.

The secret is to find “your people” at the interview stage!

This is a 90% success.

How do you build this synergy inside the company?

– I thought I already knew everything about organisations and people. But after I’d completed the HR course, I came up with a few key findings on the issue.

Nowadays soft skills are a MUST. At our company, we build our processes not only on hard or soft skills as a set of nice-to-have capabilities but also on mutual understanding, support and trust. In our teams, there is no place for discredit and hostility.

It actually made our way easier and allowed to breathe fully. For us, trust and responsibility are core values — when you do not have to control all the processes, but let them evolve naturally. We hire people to make the company better together. We strive to trust the choices that are made daily, rather than controlling and confining staff with job descriptions. For our company, control is exhausting; still, I see the need for control in some cases.

I’d say there is a range of quite simple things that indicate whether the company has a healthy culture, both internally and externally.

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” — Henry Ford

Ways to achieve good results may be different, but at the end of the day, everything should be in the following way:

• The company sells the services they provide and provides the services they sell;
• All the businesses processes work properly;
• The company is able to provide its employees with maximum comfort;
• The members are happy;
• The clients are happy likewise.

What makes your company feel “healthy”?

– First of all, we are just a great team of individuals who enjoy life, friendship, and the products we develop and launch. Another thing: we are small. That doesn’t mean weak. Being small is actually the biggest strength we’ve been able to keep through the years. I heard a lot that it won’t help the company succeed. In today’s challenging times, bigger isn’t always better.

I mean, we have never been more than 35–40 people. This kind of organisation, instead of a featureless corporation, makes us who we are. The power is in the people.

One more important thing about being a “healthy company” is when you wake up in the morning and simply WANT to go to work. Ask yourself, do you want to go to YOUR WORK in the morning?

In 2020, we celebrated our 20th anniversary. It’s been a long journey. It’s been experience. It’s been friendship. It’s been close people who have become family, not just co-workers.

What is clear is that no matter how big or small your company is, when all of us keep the same values, the company becomes truly “healthy”.