What is The Tech Culture Survival Guide?

Culture is a complex, subjective yet powerful force – one that every organisation needs to understand and harness. It’s the backbone of any resilient tech startup – “it’s what keeps people at the company and it’s what keeps customers coming back.”

We’ve partnered with Tech South West to conduct a deep dive into the cultural challenges technology firms face as they scale and adapt to new working models, to create The Tech Business Culture Survival Guide.

Making use of qualitative and quantitative data, the Tech Business Culture Survival Guide will be a powerful tool, indispensable to forward-thinking tech businesses in the South West and beyond. From start-ups to established organisations, companies of all sizes will benefit from a detailed look at the way they work.

This page outlines everything you need to know about the guide, the research so far, and key dates to look out for.

Dieter Wood, Managing Director of Interaction, says: “With the UK technology sector expanding 2.6 times faster than the rest of the UK economy, it’s a critical time for ambitious technology organisations to get to grips with their workplace culture. New working models, high-pressure environments and skills shortages means a robust workplace culture should be at the heart of any tech business, especially a rapidly-scaling one.”

Research-driven insights

Research to reveal key learnings and opportunities for South West’s tech sector.

The Tech Business Culture Survival Guide will be developed from a variety of sources, enabling us to unpick key issues and provide growing businesses with a set of comprehensive guidelines for building and maintaining a sustainable culture that will enable their team and enable them to rapidly scale.

As well as surveys and questionnaires, Interaction and Tech South West will stream three digital panels with tech leaders, covering Wellness, Culture and Attracting and Retaining Talent. Learnings from the panels will be combined with wider market insight and research.

If you work for a tech business, you can contribute to the research through the links below.

Key dates

We’ve listed key dates when the research will be taking place, get involved and register.

Survey

Do you work for a tech company? Have your say.

• Culture Survey: Now open! You can take part here

Webinars

Looking for answers? Join the webinars and gain insights from the experts.

• Creating a brilliant workplace culture? 11.30am Wednesday 20th October

• Winning the war for talent. 11am Wednesday 3rd November

• Wellbeing: the top of every workplace agenda. 11am Wednesday 17th November

Accessing the guide

The Tech Culture Survival Guide will be available at the annual and highly-anticipated Tech South West Awards on the 25th of November.

After the awards, you’ll be able to download your copy from here.

An in-depth look

As part of our research we’ll be conducting two surveys.

Survey #1: Culture

Businesses cannot assume what’s important to their people and neither do we.

Every business is unique and this survey looks to uncover the attitudes of employees towards culture; its importance, how it’s built, and if they feel connected to it.

Then we’ll explore the effect of the pandemic on work relationships and returning to the office.

And finally which factors are actually important when it comes to talent retention and attraction.

You can tell us what you think and contribute to the research here.

Survey #2: Wellbeing

Businesses who look after their people will in turn look after their customers.

Especially following lockdown as the pandemic has heightened everyone’s expectation of employers to prioritise good health and the wellbeing of their people.

So, what does a happy, healthy workforce need?

We’ll be asking questions across social looking to uncover employee attitudes to wellbeing; what really matters, the impact of the pandemic, and beyond this we’ll explore how relationships can support their wellbeing.

The Events

We’ll be hosting a series of 3 insightful webinars. Details below.

1. Creating a bulletproof workplace culture

With the UK technology sector expanding 2.6 times faster than the rest of the UK economy, it’s a critical time for ambitious technology organisations to conquer their workplace culture.

Culture is a complex, subjective yet powerful force – one that every organisation needs to understand and harness. It’s the backbone of any resilient tech startup – “it’s what keeps people at the company and it’s what keeps customers coming back.” But how do you build it?

In this webinar we talk to some of the South West’s brightest tech minds about how they’ve created their resilient cultures and the challenges and learnings they’ve picked up along the way.

On the panel; David Kelly from Storm, Anna Klosowska from NMI, and Rob McGowan from Edit.

Winning the war for talent (3rd November)

With the UK tech industry facing a skills shortage, amplified by the pandemic, how can businesses unlock the power of their culture to attract and retain top talent?

Businesses must be wary of assuming they know what motivates their team and potential recruits as they grow.

We’ll be using key insights from our employee survey to get to the heart of what it takes to create a brilliant employee value proposition which retains key talent and find out what’s really driving the candidate market.

Join us.

When? 3rd November at 11am

Register now

Wellbeing: the top of every workplace agenda (17th November)

Wellbeing is at the top of every workplace agenda, more so now than ever; especially for tech businesses.

Working in tech has often been associated with job burnout, stress, and poor mental health; do those clichés still ring true, or do employees now expect their mental health and wellness to be a key priority of their employer?

We’ll combine data from our employee survey in conversation with forward-thinking tech businesses to explore the key issues and what’s driving employee happiness and safety in a post-lockdown world.

Join us.

When? 17th November at 11am

Register now

The Tech Business Culture Survival Guide – how to access it?

We’re still in process of creating this invaluable report but as soon as it’s ready we’ll let you know.

Keep an eye on this page for updates, or to make sure you don’t miss out sign up to our monthly newsletter?

In partnership with Tech South West

Tech South West is the only tech cluster for the whole of the South West of England. Led by a steering group of tech clusters, hubs, companies and experts from across the region, it helps support, connect and showcase the tech sector – focusing its activities on business support, funding guidance and talent.

Tech South West is run by tech companies and clusters including Digital Plymouth, TechSPARK, Digital Northern Devon, Software Cornwall, Digital Taunton, Tech Exeter, Engine Shed and Silicon South.

Useful links

• Tech Business Culture Survival Guide
• Harnessing your tech company’s culture