PGi
Atlanta, GA
Grade: A
| Editor’s Summary: PGi is a leading communications and collaboration company always innovating and working towards the future. There is recognition of success, promoting from within, long-term development plans as well as fundraising and charity drives. There are great benefits and an award-winning, long-term adoption benefit with up to $8,000 in expense reimbursement. There are global offices in beautiful and central locations as well as a strong focus on work/life balance. PGi has a culture of transparency and embraces the ‘tarp’ concept that teaches how to use productive conflict to get/keep a team and/or organization on track. |
| Intro: PGi is a business communications provider with a focus on helping people connect via technology. With a nearly 30-year heritage in the unified communications and collaboration space, PGi is a leading global company with an empowering open culture where people feel they can make a difference. Currently, we source 25% of our hires from referrals. PGi provides its candidates with opportunities to build, challenge and innovate at a rapid pace, in a global environment that rewards contributions. Our roles and responsibilities are simple and easy to understand, meaning there’ no hidden expectations from recruitment through retention. We empower our staff to utilize our technology to work from any environment they choose, enabling continuous innovation with our technology and empowerment of our employees to help people connect. |
Impact statements:
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Advancement Opportunities:
We take pride in making promoting from within a priority. Our employees are the first to know about internal openings and we enable them to easily apply to evolve and grow within the company. We ensure all employees are engaged with cross-functional teams and projects that enable them to be at the forefront of our strategy. We make executive-level engagement at all levels of the company a top priority, so our employees can learn, contribute and engage on the company’s progress and go-forward strategy. With this level of exposure, we continually unleash opportunities for growth from within.
Measuring satisfaction:
We encourage real-time feedback and input about the company, our culture, performance and future with regular employee surveys, employee representative groups, departmental delegates and direct access to our CEO. We host interactive, virtual and in-person Town Hall Meetings with open Q&A sessions.
Some of our office locations are situated in beautiful open and green areas with plenty of parking and easy access (Colorado Springs and Clonakilty, Ireland), while others are in convenient city center locations, including London, Frankfurt, Paris, Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Alpharetta and Denver. Our office designs are geared towards the locations to inspire creativity and unleash productivity with open floor plans, various sized meeting rooms and plenty of technology to help people connect. For example, there are no private offices for executives in the Denver office. Senior employees are seated in the open floorplan mix. This enables collaboration, connection, innovation and positive energy. For those who work from home or other off-site locations, they can work in the environment that best suits them.
Creative meeting places:
As a virtual meeting company, we help people connect. As a company, we have creative meeting locations as part of our culture to inspire creativity and apply these experiences to our technology innovations. Some of the recent, creative locations have been during exercise on the beach, rugby club, family events, outside lunches, local pub meetups, PGi President’s Club, Sales Kick Off, Care Ranch Club, Disney visits and ski incentive trips. We also host meetings over meals off site and host short-term retreats (western ranches, lake venues, entertainment & team building venues, etc.) to unleash creativity and productivity. We define how meetings are conducted and because meetings are our day to day, we are able to live life and meet our work requirements seamlessly. The freedom to meet anywhere is creative in itself.
Perks:
We offer many special perks for our employees, including discounts with local retailers and service providers, public transit passes, luncheon vouchers, free fruit and baked goods, an employee discount portal (PerkSpot), as well as a consumer loan portal for short-term personal loans. We also host annual company events including BBQs with employees’ family and year-end celebrations. In our office, we provide free food, healthy snacks and beverages, as well as frequent catered lunch events.
Fun:
Having fun is part of our culture – from offering employee lunches to ice cream days to celebrations around holidays and key events to contests, raffles, cornhole tournaments, patio happy hours and karaoke, we provide a wide-range of fun for our employees.
How corporate vision is communicated:
Our brand mantra is helping people connect – simple and effective, easy to remember and links with our strategy. We host town halls, produce videos from the CEO, distribute weekly bulletins, broadcast PGi TV, and all of management are tasked with communicating to their teams to ensure alignment on our vision, strategy and priorities. We have a robust internal communications and employee engagement program that keeps employee communication a priority. We host a new hire orientation where new employees learn about our mantra, strategic objectives, and receive links to other information to learn about our products, where we are in product life cycle, etc.
Empowering employees:
PGi has a culture of transparency and embraces the ‘tarp’ concept that teaches how to use productive conflict to get/keep a team and/or organization on track. In essence, creating a healthy conflict culture. As such, the leadership team establishes challenges that the organization is going through, sets priorities and works together to ensure an all-hands role in problem solving. We categorize top issues that impact our customers and operations and never focus on our employee challenges, promoting a culture of honesty and transparency. We engage in deep discussions with employees who are related to any changes prior to exercising an actual change. We do this in an effort to better understand the situation and the conditions, avoiding any misunderstandings, confusion or frustration to the purpose of the change. We continually solicit suggestions/feedback, and offer incentives for employees to improve operations and they share in the savings by offering monetary rewards.
We announce ‘Make A Difference’ (MAD) awards and Kudos awards throughout the teams and feature in our Care Friday Edition. Our Medallion program recognizes 20 annual winners, globally each year. Non-Sales & Sales Support employees for their excellent Achievement, Commitment and Performance and especially for going the extra mile. Medallion Awards winners are recognized via email to all global employees. PGi President’s Club and Medallion awards are also promoted via social media. PGi TV highlights winners for the larger offices.
As a global company, we have many different layers of management. Our Senior Leadership team has been expanded to include 120 people with representation from across the globe and all functions, and they participate in regular meetings for cross-organizational clarity. We proactively identify barriers to making decisions and simplify processes to allow more autonomy. We provide “Logical Thinking Sessions” coordinated by our contracted doctor to help our employees reach the decision logically with “logical mapping” process, including mapping tools to show how to step into the decision or enter an effective discussion for the final decision.
Ensuring well-being:
PGi offers a number of well-being programs for our employees, including health and fitness education (e.g. mindfulness, healthy eating) heart screenings, employee assistance programs, health benefits for employees and their families, massage days, pilates & yoga classes, and cancer awareness programs. We offer Bright Horizons (back-up care for children, spouse or elders; as well as Sittercity and Care.com memberships to help with family care or vacation needs). We also offer a Wellness Fitbit Program, free Employee Assistance Programs along with trendy Text Therapy.
| Closing company statements: PGi is a business communications provider with a focus on helping people connect via technology, and we apply this brand mantra to our employees’ growth and development. Each employee has full access to our suite of communication and collaboration tools, enabling them to work where, when and how they prefer. We give people room to decide how the work will get done. We keep processes simple and effectively remove roadblocks to prioritize our customers’ needs and to align and drive our strategy.We are entering an exciting phase of our nearly 30-year history as we transform into the UCaaS global market. Our employees are passionate, creative, driven by innovation and obsessed with providing best-in-class customer care. We also believe in giving back to the local community and participate in a variety of philanthropic activities. When asked why people stick around, they will say hands down, “the people”. We have amazing smart, business focused people who are really good at making things happen fast.Join us and work for the best collaboration company in the world as we embark on our transformation under new senior leadership. |
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