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Apply Today18. September 2023
Sustainable Celebrations: Our All Company Culture Week 2023 Leaves a Lasting Impact
Every year at Personio we bring all of our employees together for All Company Culture Week, and this year was the same – but better. In August, all 1,900 employees traveled to Munich (or joined remotely if they preferred) to connect, collaborate, and celebrate an amazing first half of the year and ramp up our energy for H2 and beyond. While this annual event represents a major investment of time and resources for Personio, we know it’s worth it to showcase how much we value our culture to each member of our team.
As with every ACCW, our goal was to help our Personios build meaningful connections across all levels and departments, reconnect with teammates based in other offices, and meet some of our new joiners for the first time (we’ve grown by 17 percent since our last ACCW!). We also aimed to find relevant ways to collaborate and interact with our new Personio Principles – an update to the former Values and Operating principles – and celebrate the Personios that have gone above and beyond this year.
Driving Sustainability and Inclusion
Our program included: A leadership summit, to allow all our People Leaders to connect and collaborate; time together as a department to celebrate H1, and prepare for H2; and company-wide activities and workshops to enable a deeper understanding and integration of the new Personio Principles. We finished the week with our Summer Celebration, where we highlighted the inspiring uniqueness of each of the countries we operate in.
Alongside all of these internally-focused goals, we were also focused on ensuring All Company Culture week was fully aligned with our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) goals.
Not only do we know that candidates and employees seek out companies with commitments and beliefs that align with their own, but we also greatly value and understand our own social responsibilities as an organization. That’s why we’ve adopted the UN’s goals for sustainable development, and include those focus areas in everything we do – including All Company Culture Week.
Of the UN’s 17 goals, we prioritized 5 to focus on for this event:
1. No Poverty & Reduced Inequalities
We partnered with one of our Personio Foundation impact portfolio companies, Social Builder, who help guide, train, and integrate women into the technology world. During the ACCW Summer Celebration we hosted a (stationary) bike-a-thon where Personios could help raise money for the charity: for every kilometer they biked, Personio donated €20! In total, our team biked 135 km and donated €2,700 to this cause.
Our impact portfolio consists of a number of exceptional nonprofits and social enterprises. Personio Foundation supports these organizations with strategic financial grants and close mentoring and support through the Foundation and from the wider Personio team.
2. Zero Hunger
The food trucks featured during our Summer Celebration were themed around the countries that we operate in. Personios could get paella in “Spain,” loaded fries in “Amsterdam,” käsespätzle in “Germany,” and much more. There was something for everyone! And, the best part was even the most diligent of carnivores could not tell that all of our food options were vegan or vegetarian, and promoted sustainable agriculture.
3. Gender Equality
At Personio, our current gender diversity globally is 43 percent female and 55 percent male. In leadership, 42 percent of all People Manager roles are filled by people identifying as female, while our Executive Team has a 50/50 split. During ACCW, gender equality was prioritized when choosing our hosts and speakers to ensure we represent the people at Personio.
Gender equality is a top focus for us as we make progress towards our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts. So we also utilized this week to launch our annual “Count Me In” campaign, in which Personios share about their experiences at our company. This enables us to monitor our progress towards creating an environment where everyone can belong, with a specific focus on women in the Technology industry.
4. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable
The collaborative work we designed during #ACCW helps us to strive towards our strategic vision: improving business performance by driving excellence in people operations and strategy. This work ultimately helps us to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable, by enabling the organizations with that focus to do their best work.
In addition, to help make our ACCW Summer Celebration feel even more inclusive and safe, we had quiet zones onsite that offered our Personios a more calming environment, allowing them to disconnect and/or recharge. In every element we designed, it was important to us that all of our Personio’s feel valued, respected and included. We ensure accessible routes to all of the event areas, and viewing platforms to ensure everyone can see the stages, and we make changes and adaptations that cater for invisible disabilities too. For example, we made a site map with the event layout, making it easier for attendees who needed extra assistance to know where they could find it and our pre-event communications included an opportunity for Personio’s to easily share any reasonable adjustments.
5. Responsible Consumption and Production
While providing this in-person time for our teams is a key component of Culture Week, we are aware that this much travel has a negative impact on the environment. To ensure we did this in the most responsible way possible, we encouraged economy class travel (which means less carbon dioxide per passenger) or trains wherever possible (which emit six times less greenhouse gasses than planes, on average).
We also chose hotels within walking distance of the office, and chose off-site locations that were close to the office to promote eco-friendly travel. In addition, we also ensured that all catering services offered throughout the week were planned according to the number of people who RSVP’ed to reduce waste, and promoted recycling and reuse where possible.
At the end of the event we surveyed all our attendees: 81 percent of them now feel more informed and energized for the year ahead, and 89 percent feel more connected to their fellow Personios. Accomplishing this while also making progress towards our CSR goals is a huge success for us!
We know that one action will not change the world, but many small changes add up to a meaningful impact, and #ACCW23 was just one example of how we prioritize our CSR goals in our everyday work. How do you make Corporate Social Responsibility a core element of your company?
Don’t miss out to be a part of our next #ACCW! We’re hiring!
