My Experience as a Workhuman Engineer
My first experience with our product happened right when I joined in 2019. We had just rolled out a new “Welcome Human” award, recognising new employees. Having such a warm welcome message from my manager and colleagues – many whom I had yet to meet – was a great way to feel welcomed and included right from the start. Helping people feel this sense of engagement is more important now than ever before as organisations look to implement new remote and hybrid work models. As of today, I’ve officially been working from home for longer than I had been in the office. Despite this remote environment, I’ve been able to learn about so many of my colleagues through the product. I can see who is celebrating having a baby, buying a home, or completing a marathon. Our awards feed showcases all the work and projects taking place across different departments. As more companies lean into hybrid and remote work, this has proven to be a valuable way to keep the company culture and human connections alive and thriving, while also driving productivity, reducing turnover, and even advancing DE&I efforts.
As a front-end engineer, I work on the spend management and reporting capabilities of our product. This includes how users access certain privileges and what data they have access to. We are superusers of our own product here at Workhuman®, and it’s rewarding to know that the code I’m writing is being used by people I work with (even my own manager). I am always amazed by the volume of recognition awards given not only across our customer base, but also within our own organisation. I could be running a test on a piece of code and pulling up some data from just a short period of time , and seeing all of the awards, comments, and digital interactions and touchpoints that happen every day is so exciting. We’re building tools that take these emotional and human concepts and turn them into business data that aligns to organisational goals.
Earlier in my career, I’ve worked for teams that were really demanding. There are work environments that can be stressful because you feel like you are on your own to solve challenges and it feels like things are never able to get fixed. This isn’t the case at Workhuman. I’m happy to be on a team that, yes, has deadlines – but is also relaxed enough for us to take the time to learn and find out the best way to develop the product. The weight of our challenges isn’t as heavy because we work as a team in an agile and lean environment. Even when we have disagreements, we are able to disagree respectfully and can always find a way to move forward together.
Our ongoing focus on improvement keeps me motivated. With this kind of mindset, you are always doing something different and looking at challenges through a new lens. When we are working on our sprints to push out new updates, we have a process that allows us to collaborate and share feedback, offer improvements, and move forward successfully. We’re always checking things off our to-do list and making sure things are fixed and improved as soon as possible, even if that means looping in more people and changing our approach.
We’ve grown so much in the past year, and with the uptick in customer demand, there are no signs of slowing down any time soon. In technology, we have so many opportunities for people to join our teamOpens in a new tab as we continue to build new features and bring on new customers.
Even though our product helps us feel connected and celebrated while physically apart, I am looking forward to returning to the office and seeing my colleagues again soon. Our company has always provided opportunities for us to come together and socialise, whether it’s collaboration spaces and common areas to get work done or special events like bringing food trucks on site or having a special company celebration. Those special events and in person conversations are what has helped us establish a rich, human-centric culture, which is enhanced by our platform.