What have you been intentional about prioritising in the workplace culture at Rethink Priorities? If you focus on making it a great place for people to work, how do you do that?
At Rethink Priorities we take an employee-focused approach. We do our best to ensure that our staff have relevant tools and resources to do their best work, while also having enough flexibility to maintain their work-life balance. Staff happiness is a high priority for us and one of our strategic goals.
Some aspects of our employee-centered approach include:
Competitive benefits and perks – we offer unlimited time off, flexible work schedule, professional development opportunities, stipends etc., which are available to full- and part-time staff, as well as our fellows/interns.
Opportunities to socialize, make decisions, and take on new projects – for example, we have monthly social meetings, we run random polls to solicit opinions/ideas from staff, and create opportunities for employees to participate in various initiatives, like leading a workshop.
Biannual all staff surveys – we collect feedback from our staff twice a year. The survey asks a series of questions about leadership, management, organizational culture, benefits and compensation, psychological safety, amongst others. The results are thoroughly analyzed and guide our decisions about how to improve our culture, moving forward.
Positive environment – we foster an inclusive and welcoming environment in which we encourage individuals to pose their questions, provide feedback, share thoughts, and raise concerns; additionally, we practice transparency at RP with regards to all aspects of our operations (e.g., decision-making, salary).
Internal processes – we continuously revise and/or develop internal processes and practices to ensure equity across the entire organization (e.g. we have recently audited our hiring procedures to increase equity and reduce bias when selecting candidates).
Reflection – we reflect on how we do our work, how we interact with one another, what culture we aspire to develop, and implement necessary changes.
I really appreciate your structured response :-) Would you happen to have any documents about the actionables behind each of these? Like this handbook at Valve? :D
*I ask because I’d be curious to learn about the actionable tips that others can replicate from your experience :-)
We’re working right now on a values and culture setting exercise where we are figuring out intentionally what we like about our culture and what we want to specifically keep. I appreciate Dominika’s comment but I want to add a bit more of what is coming out of this (though it isn’t finished yet).
Four things I think are important about our culture that I like and try to intentionally cultivate:
Work-life balance and sustainability in our work. Lots of our problems are important and very pressing and it is easy to burn yourself out working hard on it. We have deliberately tried to design our culture for sustainability. Sure, you might get some more hours of work this year if you work harder but it isn’t worth burning out just a few years later. We want our researchers here for the long haul. We’re invested in their long-term productivity.
Rigor and calibration. It’s very easy to do research poorly and unfortunately easy to do bad research that misleads people because it is hard to see how the research is bad. Thus a lot of work must be done by our researchers to ensure that our work is accurate and useful.
Ownership. In a lot of organizations, managers want their employees to do exactly what they are told and follow processes to the letter. At Rethink Priorities, we think the ideal employee instead seeks to understand the motivation behind the assignment and how it fits into our goals and notices if there is a better way to achieve the same goals or even if the project shouldn’t be done.
Working on the right things. There are a lot of problems that we need to solve, so we must prioritize them. Selecting the right research question can often be more impactful than answering it.
We’ll have something more finished at a later date!
Your work-life balance and ownership points remind me of the culture at Valve!
Here are some notes I took on their culture if you’d be interested in ideas to implement. The points highlighted in orange are the actionables to implement :-)
What have you been intentional about prioritising in the workplace culture at Rethink Priorities? If you focus on making it a great place for people to work, how do you do that?
This is a great question! Thank you so much!
At Rethink Priorities we take an employee-focused approach. We do our best to ensure that our staff have relevant tools and resources to do their best work, while also having enough flexibility to maintain their work-life balance. Staff happiness is a high priority for us and one of our strategic goals.
Some aspects of our employee-centered approach include:
Competitive benefits and perks – we offer unlimited time off, flexible work schedule, professional development opportunities, stipends etc., which are available to full- and part-time staff, as well as our fellows/interns.
Opportunities to socialize, make decisions, and take on new projects – for example, we have monthly social meetings, we run random polls to solicit opinions/ideas from staff, and create opportunities for employees to participate in various initiatives, like leading a workshop.
Biannual all staff surveys – we collect feedback from our staff twice a year. The survey asks a series of questions about leadership, management, organizational culture, benefits and compensation, psychological safety, amongst others. The results are thoroughly analyzed and guide our decisions about how to improve our culture, moving forward.
Positive environment – we foster an inclusive and welcoming environment in which we encourage individuals to pose their questions, provide feedback, share thoughts, and raise concerns; additionally, we practice transparency at RP with regards to all aspects of our operations (e.g., decision-making, salary).
Internal processes – we continuously revise and/or develop internal processes and practices to ensure equity across the entire organization (e.g. we have recently audited our hiring procedures to increase equity and reduce bias when selecting candidates).
Reflection – we reflect on how we do our work, how we interact with one another, what culture we aspire to develop, and implement necessary changes.
I really appreciate your structured response :-) Would you happen to have any documents about the actionables behind each of these? Like this handbook at Valve? :D
*I ask because I’d be curious to learn about the actionable tips that others can replicate from your experience :-)
We’re working right now on a values and culture setting exercise where we are figuring out intentionally what we like about our culture and what we want to specifically keep. I appreciate Dominika’s comment but I want to add a bit more of what is coming out of this (though it isn’t finished yet).
Four things I think are important about our culture that I like and try to intentionally cultivate:
Work-life balance and sustainability in our work. Lots of our problems are important and very pressing and it is easy to burn yourself out working hard on it. We have deliberately tried to design our culture for sustainability. Sure, you might get some more hours of work this year if you work harder but it isn’t worth burning out just a few years later. We want our researchers here for the long haul. We’re invested in their long-term productivity.
Rigor and calibration. It’s very easy to do research poorly and unfortunately easy to do bad research that misleads people because it is hard to see how the research is bad. Thus a lot of work must be done by our researchers to ensure that our work is accurate and useful.
Ownership. In a lot of organizations, managers want their employees to do exactly what they are told and follow processes to the letter. At Rethink Priorities, we think the ideal employee instead seeks to understand the motivation behind the assignment and how it fits into our goals and notices if there is a better way to achieve the same goals or even if the project shouldn’t be done.
Working on the right things. There are a lot of problems that we need to solve, so we must prioritize them. Selecting the right research question can often be more impactful than answering it.
We’ll have something more finished at a later date!
Your work-life balance and ownership points remind me of the culture at Valve!
Here are some notes I took on their culture if you’d be interested in ideas to implement. The points highlighted in orange are the actionables to implement :-)