PagerDuty’s People-First Approach to Community
People First is a philosophy we put into practice every day. Today, we’re diving into the evolving ways that we do so through community building, with our employees and around the globe.
75% of Dutonians work primarily from home, versus 20% two years ago. Distributed is our new normal. All new hires have the chance to select a work mode that best suits them—hybrid, in-office, or anywhere—to provide ultimate flexibility in where they work.
Making Moments That Matter
To help Dutonians thrive, we’re making it easier to socialize, collaborate, network, and take part in our rich community.
“Donuts” and “Casual Collisions” are two initiatives that recreate chance meetings and banter in a virtual environment. Teams may opt to add Donuts to their Slack channels, whereby a bot assigns random pairings within the channel to have a social chat. Our Casual Collisions initiative expands that concept to pairings across the company.
Atlanta-based Recruiter Joe playing a prank on Toronto-based Data Analyst Rachel in a recent Donut.
In addition to social connections, PagerDuty has evolved its biannual HackWeek tradition, which now takes place virtually, making it an equitable experience for all participants. HackWeek is a chance for Dutonians to pursue an innovative idea with folks across the company they otherwise might not have met, much less worked with on a project.
Connecting Through PagerDuty Values
PagerDuty’s purpose, mission, vision, and values connect Dutonians globally. We exist to empower teams with the time and efficiency to build the future and envision a more equitable world. We apply these beliefs to everything we do, including the employee experience.
Vibe, a program under our Workplace Experience Team, helps to build and strengthen connections among Dutonians, and ensures they feel connected to our brand and core values. Many of our most popular Vibe events are cross-team initiatives with Social Impact and Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), reflecting our true values orientation around giving back, collaboration, and ID&E. For example, our STEP-temper initiative saw 32 teams across the globe competing in a month-long fitness challenge for charity, collectively raising $26,000 for an amazing non-profit organization, Humanity Matters.
This year, Vibe is bringing to life a different PagerDuty value each quarter through a combination of fun social activities that continue to tie in elements of giving back. There will be virtual concerts, contests, hands-on activities, and opportunities for the whole family to get involved, like Bring Your Child to Work Day. Based on the increasing level of comfort and desire voiced by our team, we will also be hosting a number of in-person events.
Vibe will also continue running its ongoing programming, including bimonthly guided meditation and #WatercoolerWednesday discussion threads on Slack.
PagerDuty Improves Our Communities
The PagerDuty community extends far beyond Dutonians, to include our customers, partners, and the communities in which we live and work. As part of our pledge 1% commitment, we pledge 1% of employee working time to accelerate change in our local and global communities.
Our social impact programs are designed to mobilize employee skills and interests to serve community needs and build trust and greater equity. Three examples include our Volunteer Time Off (VTO), Technical Pro Bono program, and Giving program.
We give employees 20 hours of paid VTO each year to lend their time and skills to organizations and causes of their choice. They volunteer at their child’s school, support local nonprofits, participate in voting-related or mentorship activities, and more. As employees track their volunteer time and impact, they earn funds from PagerDuty to donate to causes important to them.
We start the year strong with a tradition of collective volunteering at our annual Company Kick-Off (CKO). This year at CKO, Dutonians supported 18 virtual projects that advance equity, expand opportunities for underrepresented communities, and further the impact of PagerDuty nonprofit customers and local partners. Dutonians helped brainstorm solutions for challenges our partners were facing, like identifying the most fitting communications tool that allows our partner and nonprofit customer WeRobotics to successfully engage all members of their Flying Labs Network.
Year-round, we collaborate with our ERGs and Community Responders, a global network of employees who drive social impact activations in their respective regions, to create drop-in, virtual volunteer opportunities each month for any employee to join.
Dutonians in Atlanta enjoying a day of group volunteering at the Atlanta Community Food Bank.
Through our growing technical Pro Bono program, employees utilize their knowledge of our platform to support our nonprofit customers along their digital transformation journeys. Last fall, we partnered PagerDuty employees across different teams and regions with three of our nonprofit partners that work on the front lines to advance vaccine equity.
Jon Honari, PagerDuty Customer Success Manager, shared the following about his experience with the Technical Pro Bono program:
“Working with WeRobotics made me feel like PagerDuty was more than a software company, but rather a facilitator for change and good. The team at WeRobotics aims to help people in the most remote parts of the world stay healthy by delivering vaccinations and medical supplies with the aid of drones. It’s amazing to see how PagerDuty can help drive impact directly towards the well-being of humans in need, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to have played a role in their mission.”
Employees also have the opportunity to participate in financial giving and company match campaigns to support crisis response efforts, PagerDuty.org partners, and causes that are personal to them. In 2021, Dutonians supported 412 causes and 92% of Dutonians participated in our social impact programs.
Stay tuned for PagerDuty’s upcoming 2021 Impact Report to learn more.
Interested in Joining PagerDuty and Our People-First Community?
We’re hiring! Find out more about life at PagerDuty on our careers page, and in blogs 1 and 2 of this People-First series. In addition to remote opportunities, we have PagerDuty locations in Atlanta, Lisbon, London, San Francisco, Sydney, and Toronto.