As the dreary funding winter soars, at e27, we are kickstarting a new article series Line of Hire to understand an organisation’s culture and hiring philosophies to empower tech workers with the right growth tools to enable business owners to attract talent.
Terng Shing Chen is the Founder and CEO of PR and content marketing technology startup SYNC. With over a decade of experience in public relations and content marketing, Chen combines traditional PR and content methods with automation technology to create a scalable agency.
As the CEO of SYNC, Chen oversees business strategy and expansion, as the brand continues to grow in the region. He has led the company’s expansion into four markets, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and India, and set up strong partnerships in Thailand, Vietnam and The Philippines.
Chen is also the lead media and messaging trainer for SYNC, having trained over 50 leading founders, CEOs and entrepreneurs in his career. He regularly conducts training sessions for startup founders through numerous startup accelerators and venture funds.
Besides SYNC, Chen is also the Co-Founder of the travel community platform Travel Wanderlust and co-host of the business podcast Business Over Drinks.
In this episode, Chen shares his organisation’s culture and hiring philosophies.
Excerpts:
What personality traits/qualities do you look for in potential employees?
It may sound cliche, but we look for people with a couple of traits: the willingness to learn and the ability to be independent. These are critical qualities because, at SYNC, we look for people who are problem-solvers and adaptable. With technology and marketing changing at such a rapid pace, being stagnant or unwilling to learn is not a desirable quality.
How do they fit into your company culture? Tell us a little more about your company culture.
Our company culture is driven by communication. We encourage over-communication in fact, where we have team members keep everyone updated on progress on a very regular basis. This might sound a bit of an overkill, but it actually helps foster team bonding and enhance clear visibility of activity, which is necessary for our remote team.
At SYNC, we firmly believe that over-communication is a crucial factor in building strong and cohesive teams. To achieve this, we have implemented various strategies, such as daily check-ins, weekly progress reports, and team meetings that are a mix of messaging, video calls and in-person to develop some form of familiarity with each other.
We also encourage open communication channels, which are driven from the top down. This means I need to be over communicative and at the same time, I need to encourage people to speak to me and not be a stereotypical middle manager.
How do you foster transparency and encourage achievement at SYNC?
This is led by the over-communication policy we have in place, where we encourage people to share both the negatives and positives from their work. Every week a member of the team shares a detailed progress update including lessons learnt and we celebrate the individual achievements either through something as simple as a company-wide Slack message or even hosting a team dinner.
Also Read: Impactful technologies empower lives: Viveka Kalidasan of Let-Lab
Do you have a mental health policy? What does that look like?
We don’t have a detailed mental health policy, but rather we explore each instance on a case-by-case basis as everyone’s situation is different. As a team, we try to provide support and no judgment to foster honest conversations about difficult topics or situations they may be in.
In practice, this allows us to provide support where required and if necessary, provide them with time off to handle any issue. However, as we continue to scale, the ability to deal with these situations well and with compassion becomes challenging, so we are looking into more concrete processes and policies around this.
WFH or WFO, or hybrid?
WFH has been our preferred choice since day one, before the pandemic. We’ve conducted multiple in-house surveys to offer a hybrid option or a full WFO experience, but it has always been WFH for us.
How should a tech worker prepare for the funding winter?
I think the demand for high-quality talent still remains, but the companies and where the demand is coming from are evolving. If you have a valuable and relevant skillset, you will be fine, but I think gone are the days of table tennis in the offices and free beers all the time.
From my experience, this is part of the overall cycle and we see the ups and downs in the economy and for industries all the time.
How do you measure the performance of your employees?
We are output driven, so each member of our team has a clear idea of what they need to produce. As the team leader, I need to provide them with the tools for them to succeed and give them the freedom to excel. Whether you are a junior member or an experienced team leader, everyone needs to have a clear set of outcomes.
Also Read: Keep learning and building relationships during funding winter: Richard Yan of Airwallex
Will you consider a moderately skilled person with great honesty or a highly skilled person with less honesty when hiring?
I go for the former because honesty is a critical part of running a successful distributed team. We have a lot of people involved at any stage of a project and those that are willing to learn, improve as we move along and admit their mistakes and gaps in knowledge are important.
I’ve learned over time that everyone makes mistakes regardless of skill, experience or position in the company, being honest about it, ensures we can rectify the mistake and stop it from spiralling out of control. This is essential for a company like ours.
Do you encourage ‘intrapreneurship’ at SYNC?
Yes, we absolutely do with each member of the team being encouraged to learn how the business runs, and the processes behind it and get involved (to some extent) with other aspects of the overall business. If your team member understands why we do what we do and how everything works, it is easier for them to buy into our vision and mission of the brand.
How do you support upskilling for your employees?
We have a few programmes in place, some include bringing external or using internal trainers to run workshops, as well as giving certain employees the opportunity to take courses to improve their skills. It depends on what they need and the path they want to take within the company, but in all honesty, we have seen a lot of positive growth within the team from our current efforts that we plan to continue this for as long as possible.
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