Give your employees more time and joy, too

Written by Technically Media CEO Chris Wink, Technical.ly’s Culture Builder newsletter features tips on growing powerful teams and dynamic workplaces. Below is the latest edition we published. Sign up here to get the next one this Friday.

Each of us evaluates our work by time, joy and money.

How much of my time is spent at this job and how flexibly is that time used? How much joy does it give me, with the work I am assigned, the mission and status of the work and my coworkers? How much money do I make or other perks do I get?

Just about everything a company can offer us falls into one of those three categories. These, then, are the simple levers we have to build, grow and retain our teams, and not all companies are as resourced in them all.

Some lab-based sciences, cybersecurity and financial services firms are less able to offer flexibility with time. Some companies have underinvested in healthy team culture or in their employer brand, delivering less joy or status. Likewise, a divide is looming between the companies that are able to bid up compensation packages and those that are falling behind.

Many of the tech team builders I know are from big tech giants and unicorns that can pay lavishly and offer elite pedigrees. Others are just a step behind, hiring for highly profitable companies big and small or highly capitalized, fast-growth tech firms that mix competitive compensation and workplace culture to attract and retain top talent.

I put just about everybody else I speak to building a tech team into a third group. This includes tech-adjacent enterprise firms, smaller startups, tech businesses and creative agencies, nonprofits and government agencies, and the like.

For years, this group has lagged behind in compensation and too many of them also followed behind in work flexibility and employee experience. That should change. If you feel unable to keep apace with top-tier salaries, ask yourself: How can I give my team more of their time and more joy in their work here?

And now the links.

What else we’re reading

• Why Managers Fear a Remote-Work Future
• 43% of developers report better work-life balance during pandemic. IGDA developer survey also finds 37% of developers saw work-life balance hurt over past year and a half
• 4 questions to ask when building a better workplace
• Want to level up in business? Turn your managers into coaches
• Hiring, retention are top threats to businesses entering Q3, report says 

Company culture stories we’ve published lately

• What does the future of work look like now? Technical.ly will explore this August
• See inside: Mindspace opened 42K square feet of coworking in the Wanamaker Building this spring
• Why Technical.ly is closing our company Slack
• Indy Hall is closing its hub at 399 Market. But Philly’s first coworking space lives on online
• The timing of Marlette’s HQ reveals an office building reimagined for the COVID era

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