Purpose and Values Position TEKsystems for the Future
Sharing perspective on our culture evolution and who we are as a company
July 11, 2022 | By Jay Alvather, President
At TEKsystems, we firmly believe that who we are as a company—our culture, our purpose, our core values—directly affects how we show up and what we deliver for our stakeholders. For nearly 40 years, our company has evolved with the market to provide exceptional service and create significant opportunities for those we serve: our customers, our consultants and each other. In recent years, we’ve experienced incredible growth. As a global provider of business, technology and talent solutions, we’ve shifted and scaled our structure, our geography and our strategy.
With that evolution and growth, our company culture must adapt and meet the needs of our current business, so we took a step back to thoughtfully evaluate our culture. Personally, I think culture gets misconstrued too often to be something you just have and not something you can shape. Given that our culture powers our business, I want to share how we renovated our culture, what we learned about our core values and what our stakeholders can expect from TEKsystems.
How TEKsystems Renovated Our Company Culture
To renovate our culture, we dedicated time over the past year to gather feedback intentionally and methodically. We approached culture the way others may think about approaching strategy—a blueprint approach to ensure our company’s long-term growth and our customers’ success. First, we needed to understand our current state:
- What elements of our culture should we seek to retain?
- On the contrary, what core values need to be reframed or updated?
- Who do we want to be tomorrow?
- What parts of our culture should remain steadfast, and where do we roll up our sleeves and do better?
- How will we foster a culture where everyone on our team can thrive?
Over several months, we held one-on-one conversations, participated in our first-ever company-wide, interactive Culture Jam, hosted a series of dialogue sessions in different functions across the organization and finally surveyed all employees to validate what we heard. We’re fortunate to have many courageous truth-tellers in our company—employees who not only celebrated what’s great but also identified where we had opportunity to improve. Put simply, our people did the work. We listened.
Reinvigorating Our Purpose and Core Values
We validated that we’re transformation partners fueled by our purpose: creating significant opportunity and fulfillment for our customers, consultants and each other. Our purpose guides everything we do in enabling the critical things we value. Our core values shape our culture, our character and our commitments. As a result of our culture renovation, our core values are:
Our culture renovation resulted in a reinvigoration of our deeply rooted values and a reiteration of values clearly evident in our day-to-day but simply not stated. A few key takeaways:
- Relationships and serving others have been central to our company since our founding. That’s where it all started really. We wanted to demonstrate to our customers and our consultants that our service and commitment levels were outstanding and differentiating. And we believe you can accelerate opportunity through strong relationships—knowing what makes someone tick and understanding the challenges they need to overcome to be successful.
- Inclusion as well as personal and professional growth are values that had not been previously stated but have been in practice and highly regarded.
- We’ve always valued inclusion and diversity, but we enacted a purposeful strategy over the past several years. We’ve invested in initiatives, resources and programs to drive greater inclusion and equity. We established an Executive Inclusion Board, including leaders from across the company who meet regularly to evaluate our strategy, track progress and help set our priorities, such as implementing unconscious bias mitigation training and introducing our Conversations That Matter series. Other priorities have included creating more transparency into internal opportunities and building new access and development programs to increase sponsorship and advocacy of diverse talent.
- Thinking about personal and professional growth, we’ve been leading edge for years, and learning is an essential part of work. What is it like to work at TEKsystems? I would describe it as a culture where individuals truly evolve and grow as professionals and as people. But beyond professional growth, we care about employees’ personal development—who they are as people.
Throughout my career with the company, I’ve had leaders who genuinely sought to better understand me, including how my personal experiences shaped me and how I show up at work. Although difficult at first, those leaders and those conversations helped me identify how I could overcome any barriers to my continued growth and success. And I’m a better person today for it.
I enjoy hearing about individuals achieving a certain milestone or goal, but it’s most rewarding to hear someone talk about how they have become a better person, a better partner, a better parent because of their growth at TEKsystems.
What to Expect from TEKsystems
We live our core values in every interaction with each other and those we serve. That’s what this culture renovation was all about—it’s being purposeful, getting out in front and addressing what we believe needs to change and remaining true to what we believe is core to who we are as a company. All to help us fulfill our purpose and serve our stakeholders. So, what can you expect from us?
As an employee, you will continue to gain invaluable experience—how to work in a team environment, how to get incrementally better every day. You’ll develop relationships through which you will grow, develop and learn together. We spend so much of our time in our careers—we want to create an environment that builds towards a true sense of fulfillment, both personally and professionally.
For our customers and our consultants, we deliver on our promises, we deliver on our commitments. We will continue to enable our customers to capitalize on change by maximizing their technology investments, driving business growth, elevating customer experiences and mobilizing talent to accelerate their business transformation. With rigor and determination, we will continue to provide exceptional service to our consultants as we support them in their career aspirations and growth.
As business models evolve, rightfully, our culture needs to evolve and adapt. Who we are as a company is integral to what we do because it directly impacts how we show up and what we deliver. Through open communication, inclusion and a commitment to serving others, we’re creating a unique, uplifting culture that drives performance and leads to personal and professional growth. A culture driving opportunity. A culture ready for what’s next.
About the Author
Jay is passionate about working with innovative leaders to create significant opportunities for TEKsystems’ customers, consultants and employees. Having started within the Allegis Group family more than 25 years ago, Jay has held several executive leadership positions and has immersed himself in every aspect of the business. He leads thousands of incredible professionals who provide exceptional service to business leaders in the Fortune 500 through our full-stack technology services and talent solutions. Jay strongly believes in fostering a more inclusive, diverse and equitable culture—understanding the value of bridging connections and building relationships to drive growth and achieve fulfillment.
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