When the opportunity to join WiseTech Global as the People and Engagement Leader in a brand-new office in Bengaluru came up last year, I jumped at the chance. Joining as one of the first employees in India and being tasked with rapidly expanding the people footprint of a global ASX 50 company would be daunting for anybody.
There was also the barrier of understanding who WiseTech are and what they do. While each of us is impacted by logistics every day – from the food we eat and the clothes we wear – we probably don't think about the complex process of how these goods get to us. The more I learned about this rapidly growing global company and the industry, the more my interest grew.
The interview process, the people I met during the recruitment journey, and the company's commitment to their vision to be the global operating system for logistics were what sold me. I was confident that I would have the support of the wider business, and there was a vested commitment to the success of the Bengaluru office.
It's not easy moving to a new company, and like all new employees, I had to onboard, learn new processes and get to know people. To make things more interesting, my closest colleagues were in Australia, working in a different time zone and operating in a way that seemed very different from my previous companies. Combine this with the global pandemic and remote working, and collectively we had to face a whole new suite of challenges.
As a new employee in a grassroots operation, this experience has taught me many things, and I wanted to share some of these learnings as I reflect on my journey to date, shaped in a global business, and tested in a new world of work.
The importance of supporting each other
The current COVID-19 situation in India is devastating. Each of us has been affected somehow. We're all trying to cope with our own unique set of personal circumstances while also making sure we continue to be valuable team members at work.
At WiseTech, we put the health and safety of our people first. Steps we implemented and continue to develop include:
- Expansion of our employee benefits to include additional mental health support through our Employee Assistance Program.
- Provision of a monthly allowance to support our ways of working by helping our people set up their home offices.
- Introduction of COVID-19 care leave and provided complete coverage of COVID-19 under our corporate health insurance for our team members in India, including their families.
How to work smart
Our company mantra, 'lead with content' has been crucial during this time. Lead with content means we can easily share knowledge and communicate with each other. Where information needs to be shared multiple times or with various people, we can create consistency and scale our resources more effectively by creating and using content that captures our collective knowledge.
Leading with content enabled us to pivot when COVID-19 escalated and made onboarding in person impossible without creating any issues for us. From the beginning, our new starters undergo comprehensive virtual training to get them up to speed quickly and help them sink their teeth into the complex and meaningful problems we're solving.
The little things matter
From day one, we've made it our priority to ensure new starters feel welcomed and supported. We recognise this is a team effort and inclusive process, so some of the things our recently hired colleagues experience include:
- Comprehensive content-led training designed to introduce people to our culture, essential policies and procedures, mantras, values, and global teams.
- Introduction and support from a designated buddy, mentor, and key colleagues.
- A 6-month rotation program designed to help our software engineers and product managers, develop new skills and knowledge while getting to know our people.
- Virtual seminars focused on our values and mantras, enabling our people to understand where they came from, and how we implement and live by them as part of our daily work life.
One thing is sure, at WiseTech we face challenges head-on, never wavering from our objective, lowering our standards, or making compromises. We always take a flexible approach wherever we can. And we always put our people first.
We have plans to achieve big things, and we're currently looking for the right people to join our Bengaluru team and help us build our vision of being the operating system for global logistics.
If you're interested in being part of a grassroots operation and want to solve real-world problems that have a global impact, check out our current openings in our Bengaluru office here, or feel free to get in touch with me directly.