About: Founded in Australia, Cyara is a leading CX Assurance Platform that helps organisations achieve flawless customer experiences through automated testing and monitoring that simulate real-world customer interactions across IVR, voice and digital channels.
Location: Australia, US, UK and India
Cyara’s company culture
Cyara has a unique and very positive company culture. We receive this feedback consistently from employees, partners and customers. We appreciate, and even welcome, the fact that our culture is living and evolving as we continue to grow. We offer a fast-paced, results-oriented work-culture, whilst also maintaining a family-first, collaborative team, and ever positive atmosphere. Creating this type of environment requires ongoing commitment. Ultimately, our goal is to care for our own from the very first day because our people are our number one priority.
At Cyara, we live by our values of customer obsession, innovation, humility, quality, and teamwork. We have a flat company structure where we all roll up our sleeves, regardless of level, to get the job done. I am a very hands-on and accessible CEO; my door is always open to the team and honest feedback is extremely important to me – it’s how we get better.
Actively giving back to the communities in which we live and work is a huge part of our culture. We conduct group community events, including volunteering with FareShare, a Melbourne charity that grows, rescues and cooks nutritious meals for struggling Victorians. Cyara employees help prepare the food for those in need and help out with FareShare’s kitchen garden.
We’ve also worked with the Go Girls Foundation, which supports unemployed women or women who have experienced domestic violence to gain employment and independence. Our team has supported women in the “Work Ready” program to help build self-confidence and job skills, including mock interviews, counsel and advice on developing skills and acting as mentors. We have also volunteered tech support in the résumé building workshop and helped participants with technical issues and enquiries.
Moreover, all employees receive one day a quarter to do charity work for an organisation or initiative of their choice. It’s personally incredibly rewarding to know we’re now enabling over 760 days of volunteer time every year across the world.
Work-life balance
Back in May this year we launched a series of podcasts featuring the insights of our own employees and decided our first episode would focus on navigating wellness and productivity in the workplace. Work-life balance is critical to not only ensuring employees are happy and healthy, but for the success of any business. Programs that address mental health benefit businesses in terms of improved productivity and employee retention. According to Deloitte, staff turnover costs Australia an estimated $3.8 billion in lost productivity each year.
We also encourage our employees commit time to personal activities outside of work as spending time with family and friends is so important. Of course, there are times when employees work longer hours to meet deadlines. To balance that out, we strongly encourage them to take time off to make sure they look after their physical and mental wellbeing.
We are mindful of the impact COVID-19 has had on our teams and their families around the world. When working from home, it’s very easy not to switch off so we give our employees autonomy to determine how and when they conduct their work. This allows working parents to do school pick-ups and drop-offs and move their work schedules around to fit in home-based learning for their children during the school year. Balancing personal and professional life can be a juggling act so we aim to support our employees wherever possible.
We’ve also launched several workplace and social programmes to look after our people working from home during the pandemic.
I have found that meditation helps me to focus better on my work, improving my memory and attention. So in 2020, I started running meditation classes online a few times a week for the team. The feedback we received from employees taking part in these sessions has been extremely positive, and the benefits of such an easy-to-implement programme are phenomenal. Employees tell me meditation has improved their sleep, their ability to cope with stress, and more. We also have a Cyara employee that runs yoga sessions and this has been extremely well-attended by staff. Meditation and yoga sessions play an important bonding role amongst the team.
Every month we have an all-hands connect which helps to keep everyone in the loop on company news, wins and team updates. I also run quarterly small audience town halls to make sure I’m not left out of the loop!
Working at Cyara
Collaborative, proactive, accountable and fun. We have a global team that’s always consulting with one another. This has been made possible through tools like Slack and Trello, which ensure our teams can connect fast and effectively, get to know each other, and be considerate of each other’s time while remaining “face-to-face” during global travel restrictions.
To foster greater team spirit, we have conducted a range of team activities from dragon boat racing and white water rafting to racket sports championship.
We’re also big on recognition and team celebration. We rolled out Bonusly, a democratised employee recognition program, so all employees can shine a light on great work, anywhere in the business by awarding points to their colleagues. This has been very well received by Cyarans, and has proven helpful in building awareness of accomplishments, big and small.
Company values
We have four values, which are the basis of how we work, interact with each other, customers, and partners. They include:
Customer obsession – We pride ourselves on our customer focus. Our tagline of “Customer Smiles. Delivered at Scale” is one we live by every single day
Innovation – We take pride in doing things that have never been done before. We fully embrace new ideas, thinking and approaches
Humility – We’re committed to a flat, team-centric culture where everyone rolls up their sleeves to get the job done, even if it’s not in their job description
Quality – We always strive for excellence and believe the mark of a true professional is delivering a quality outcome
Our fifth unofficial value is teamwork, which was added in response to employee requests. I think that shows how important collaboration is to everyone in the company.