The Secret to a Positive Culture: Trust Your Employees

One of the most important things to do when starting a company is to define your culture. If you don’t establish your identity as a company and the values you believe in, it won’t matter what you’re selling.

We take that sentiment to heart at Relay, and it’s always gratifying when other people take notice. This is why I’m thrilled that Relay received two awards from the Philly business community: we were named a winner of the 2016 Philadelphia Business Journal’s Best Places to Work Survey, and called out as one of the Top Emerging Companies for 2016 by Philly Biz magazine.

Awards like these also encourage reflection on how we earned them. For me, it all comes back to our employees. Here at Relay, we’ve built a culture on ultimate trust in our people, matched with hands-on support– and while there’s always room to grow, it feels like our strategy is working.

The core of our culture here at Relay is that we trust our employees completely, and we give them responsibility to match that ethos.

We give our employees a ton of ownership right off the bat, asking them to reach beyond their job descriptions, bring big passion and ideas to the table, and own both their successes and their mistakes. We know that if we hire the right people– those that are willing to take risks, but also not afraid to ask for help when they need it– and support them every step of the way, we can trust them to handle whatever we throw at them.

We also recognize the other side of this equation: employees need to in turn trust us completely in order for the model to succeed. And that means fully understanding them and their career goals– at Relay, and beyond. Because if our team can’t trust us enough to be honest about what they want out of their careers, how can they trust us at all? A recent example really illustrated this principle in action; we learned that a member of our product team wants to start his own company someday. With this in mind, we gave him the opportunity to participate in our recent funding round. By having an open and honest dialogue about his personal goals, we were able to help him work towards them, while making him a better employee for Relay in the meantime– because it gave him the opportunity to reach outside his role, and he rose to that challenge, in true Relay spirit.

Seeing our team grow their skills and take on new challenges makes me excited to come to work each day — and even more excited for Relay’s future. We would love to hear from you if you’re interested in joining our team.

Head on over to our careers page to see if we’ve got a role for you.