“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”—The Tenzo Gestalt philosophy!

During one of our monthly Lunch & Learns, Ben, our Full Stack Developer, showed us how to use Blender to create a 3D rendering. We were all trying to reproduce the first picture on the left top corner—and these were some of the results! There is huge diversity within Tenzo — not just in nationalities (we have 14 and growing!), but in our personalities and ways of thinking as well. ️‍

What is Diversity?

Diversity refers to what makes each of us unique.

It can range from gender, age and ethnicity to religion, sexual orientation, physical abilities and ideologies. It also includes a person’s life experiences, how they solve issues and contribute to the company’s overall culture.

Why is it important in the workplace?

When people have different life experiences and see the world in different ways, creativity comes naturally, and new approaches to problem solving emerge.

As an example, our Customer Success Managers all speak different languages in addition to English — from Malay to Ukrainian, from French to Spanish and Italian! Thanks to this, we have found that we are able to connect on a much deeper and personal level with the customers we interact with every day; they feel better understood and free to share their thoughts, and in turn we are able to better shape our support to their specific needs, thus creating a long-lasting, healthy relationship.

Moreover, by being part of a diverse team each individual can grow professionally in multiple ways, as they are constantly exposed to new ideas and skills, different approaches to work and interpersonal relationships. On a personal level, learning about different cultures is something that opens your mind and makes you see the world in a new way.

Not only is diversity great from a personal growth point of view — it also prevents stagnation and leads to higher staff retention!

When you find the right harmony within a diverse team, you enhance each other’s abilities and achieve the best results!

How we value Diversity at Tenzo

We believe that an actual diverse environment comes not only from the different backgrounds of your team members, but from their mindset as well. If there can be complete open-mindedness about ideas and opinions, the result is a workplace where you finally know you can be who you are in all your uniqueness!

What do we do at Tenzo to ensure diversity?

Unbiased Recruitment Process

We want not only to hire diverse new candidates and enhance the company’s performance—at the heart of our efforts is the desire to create a safe place for all our team.

Some processes we’ve implemented to reduce unconscious biases to the minimum:

1. Blind Hiring: our application tracking system masks all personal information related to candidates when they are in screening stages — additionally, we ask them a set of work-related questions even before seeing their CV. We give more importance to a person’s way of thinking than their University diploma.
2. Equal opportunities survey: this helps us keep monitored the diversity dimensions among candidates.
3. People Squad: we have a squad of Tenzonians (which includes members of HR, Product and Growth Teams) which anyone can join and where we have multiple initiatives, structured in bimonthly meetings to brainstorm new ideas and progress on ongoing projects! This allows employees to actively mould the diversity policies and feel like they truly own these initiatives.

We have multiple initiatives in place that allow our employees to work according to their needs:

• Flexible working: our hybrid in person/remote working options really get to the core of meeting the needs of each of us by letting us organise our time as better suits our agenda; this way we can better handle:
  • Family care;
  • Taking a pause when needed then working outside of hours;
  • Spending more time with our pets (at Tenzo we love pets! )
  • Working comfortably from our couch, a cup of tea in hand , on a Friday evening!

• Summer remote working initiative: each of us can work 90 days during the summer abroad. This plan is designed to give more flexibility and an opportunity to travel and see family, which becomes particularly important as the Tenzo team is pretty international!
  

• Personal & professional development plans: we have PDPs that will allow you the chances and the time to help grow as you like, shaping it as you go and periodically reviewing it with your Manager.
• We ask “How are you?”, and we do care about the answer!
  

In order for us all to feel safe and to express our opinion, we ensure that people have the appropriate communication channels to say what’s on their mind. 

From chats with members of our HR Team to weekly check-ins with your Line Manager and chats with our Founders or other colleagues, where the first question they ask will always be, How are you?  And they will be ready to listen to your thoughts, both on your professional and personal life, hear of any challenges and help you grow and feel comfortable.

We all put time and effort into building relationships, so that when any person in our staff needs assistance, they feel comfortable asking for it. 

Here are a few of the tips we use and which can really help with hearing about another person’s needs.

• It’s helpful to start with a data point — for instance, if the individual in question usually talks about their weekend plans and recently does not, one could start the conversation as “haven’t heard much on your weekend plans lately…”
• It is also really important to leave a pause, as at times, an instant reaction to the question is to say ‘I’m fine’ and move on. That pause gives the individual that space to go more in-depth into their mental state.
  
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Anything that emerges from these conversations is heard and we try to help as much as possible; be it being close to a colleague if they need some support or suggesting they take a few days off to rest, we make sure to make everyone’s life better as much as we can!

What Next?

In the past six years of growing as a company we have accomplished multiple goals, from increasing gender balance, flexible working policies and more; however we never stop there! We are always looking at what step to take next and how we can do better.

If you’d like to join the awesome Tenzo Team, check out our Careers Page for open positions. And remember — always be your awesome self!