Improving—Houston connects with remote staff
How to maintain a corporate culture that’s built on inperson relationships, hightouch management and the software-industry staple of free beer and pizza in a global pandemic? In the company’s currently near-empty offices, Improving-–Houston President Devlin Liles is trying to figure that out.
We spoke to the head of the No. 1 small Top Workplaces about his struggle to make Improving’s caring culture work remotely.
Q: How would you describe Improving— Houston’s corporate culture to someone who is not necessarily familiar with the software development field?
A: Ultimately it’s about the people, which surprises quite a few folks who think that technology is primarily about, you know, new hardware or new software, new gadgets or something like that. But it’s about not only our people, but the people that are our clients and people in the community.
Q: Why do you think you keep ending up on the top 10 list for Top Workplaces? Year after year, what are you doing right?
A: That’s a question I’m not entirely comfortable with. We are often our biggest critics. We still want to do more. We want to do better. And I think that’s a part of it.
Q: In terms of day to day work, describe how your office has been affected by the pandemic.
A: It was like looking around at an empty room that used to have your friends in it and going, “OK. We’ve got to figure out a newway. We’ve got to come up with something different because our company is not these four walls.”
We started doing a lot of the digital space, but what we’re finding is it’s not enough. We’ve been doing things to try and do as safely as possible, engage outside of a video call.
Seeing our people struggle has been the hardest part. I struggle with staying disconnected in the virtual world, but seeing our folks struggle with it has been painful.
Q: In our story on your first-place win last year, we wrote that one of your employees said what they really liked was the free pizza. So, how do you make up for free pizza in the office in a pandemic?
A: I’ve got a stack of notes and a wax seal that I got as a present, and the wax seal has the Improving logo. And so, I write notes of gratitude and drop them in the mail with a gift card or something like it.
We’ve done Door Dash orders for food and everybody gets together (virtually) and has lunch. We’re all having our separate lunch, but we still get together for lunch.
Q: How have your client’s needs changed and evolved during the pandemic?
A: We’ve got some clients that are in the retail space, and you’d think they’d be just taking body blows, but what they found is they have a bunch of business there. Their sales are up year over year because everybody’s at home and they’re a home improvement store.
We’ve got airlines as customers and they’re just hurting. And we’re going to be that partner that walked through it with them. That interaction has become deeper.
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Q: Anything else you want to say about how your company is doing right now?
A: I have to say for the first time, in like six months, I’m a generally optimistic guy. I think regardless of politics and all of that, we’re going to get through this.