Making Gramener a Great Place to Work, Every Day – Ankita Sagar

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“If you are lucky enough to be someone’s employer, then you have a moral obligation to make sure people do look forward to coming to work in the morning.”

John Mackey, CEO, Whole Foods Market

Gramener has long prided itself as a leader in data analytics and storytelling. People at Gramener work passionately to bringing intriguing stories to life from seemingly mundane data. With its platform, solutions, and stories Gramener has been a forerunner in defining the next steps of the data science revolution. However, the true spirit of Gramener resides in its people who are the source of its innovation and vitality.

Gramener will mark its 10^th anniversary on February 2020. The recently achieved Great Place to Work® Certification (Oct 2019-Sept 2020) stands testimony to our purpose of serving everyone Gramener. Let us take you on the journey of how we achieved this milestone and the story behind our people’s success.

Every year, more than 8000 organizations from over 50 countries partner Great Place to Work® Institute. The objective is to create & sustain a High-Trust, High-Performance Culture™. Through our diverse people initiatives, Gramener strives to create a convivial and collaborative work environment for our team. To assess and benchmark the success of these initiatives, we partnered with the Institute for a comprehensive evaluation. As a result, we successfully achieved the certification in the Mid-Size category (100-500 employees and 2+ years of operation).

Based on the past data, less than 40% of the organizations that apply, are eligible for certification. To achieve the certification, 70% or more of an organization’s employees should rate it as a great workplace. Its people practices should be rated 2.0 or above on a 5 point scale by Great Place to Work® Institute.

How Gramener Became a Certified Great Place to Work Organization

We took our first steps towards it in October 2018. First, we understood the detailed process from the ever-responsive Great Place to Work® team. Then, we formally applied in July 2019 for the two-stage certification process. 

Stage 1 – Trust Index© Employee Survey

The Great Place to Work® Institute conducted a two-week-long employee survey built on the five pillars.

• The credibility of management
• Respect for people
• Fairness at the workplace
• Pride
• The camaraderie between people.

It helped evaluate our overall Trust Index© score. The Trust Index© score is the percentage of employees who rate 4 or 5 to the 56 statements of the survey on a 5 point scale. A minimum threshold score of 70 was needed to qualify.

Stage 2 – Culture Audit©

Part I of the audit covered facts about the organization. For example, demographic information of the employees, benefits, and amenities provided to the team along with our policies in place.

Part II covered Gramener’s detailed people practices with their intended purpose and metrics for measuring success across 16 diverse areas.

In this section, we shared what makes the heart and soul of Gramener. All our initiatives to develop and nurture the team, collaborative efforts to build a vibrant culture of mutual respect, programs to give back to the community, ways of celebrating shared successes and steps taken to encourage inclusivity found a home in our responses. We laid out what makes our DNA – the democratic voices of our people and the listening ears of our leadership, the helping hands of colleagues and the myriad ways in which each of us inspires those around.

The application requested us to share the purpose of individual programs and policies, as well as the “threads” that tie our culture together.  Through the 1.5 months long introspective exercise, we were not only able to showcase our culture but also, discovered the new areas of growth and action. Achieving the certification is indeed an honor. The greater responsibility is continuing to live up to the faith the employees have reposed in us.

We are thankful to the Great Place to Work® Institute for this opportunity to proudly share our story with everyone. Gramener welcomes like-minded, curious and talented people to join this journey as we come together to create a great place to work, every day!

Note: This blog is written by Ankita Sagar, Manager – People Happiness at Gramener.