The best team cultures are ones that revolve around shared values like collaboration, humility and dependability. Just ask the following tech professionals.
“We’re a low-ego, high-curiosity culture,” Alyene Schneidewind, chief performance officer at IT software company LogicMonitor, said. “We ask questions, challenge assumptions and learn from one another.”
At Alaffia, a claims operations partner for health plans, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Adun Akanni said a healthy balance of collaboration and autonomy has been a core part of how they’ve built Alaffia from the start.
“It’s something we’re intentional about preserving,” Akanni said.
Built In spoke with six tech professionals across industries to hear what values make their teams cultures unique — and worth applying to.
Featured companies
LogicMonitor provides IT and business teams visibility and predictability across on-prem and multi-cloud environments.
Which of your core values most defines how your team works together?
“One team” is truly a core value for us. I see it every day at LogicMonitor — people stepping in to support one another, working across functions and geographies to deliver the best outcomes for our customers. That spirit matters even more as AI changes how work gets done. We’re moving toward fewer handoffs between roles and a stronger focus on speed and customer value, which makes it essential that we stay aligned and work as one. We’re a low-ego, high-curiosity culture. We ask questions, challenge assumptions and learn from one another. None of us has all the answers, so we experiment, share what we learn and adapt together.
How do you align new hires to your culture?
We redesigned our onboarding experience around a simple idea. People should experience our culture from day one, not just hear about it in a presentation. Our Launchpad onboarding program introduces new hires to our business, leaders, values and culture, while creating opportunities to build relationships outside their immediate teams. In the United States, that now includes volunteering with Operation Gratitude as part of the first-day experience. Giving back together immediately puts our “one team” value into practice and creates connections that aren’t based on title, function or tenure.
How do you celebrate employees who live your values in action?
We have a quarterly peer-recognition program called the “Love” awards (stands for “living our values everyday”). It’s a chance for LMers to nominate teammates who bring our values to life. We celebrate the winners at an all-hands meeting and share the stories behind their nominations with the broader company. Hearing their stories is inspiring. It recognizes their contributions and encourages all of us to keep living our values. At the end of the day, how people work together matters just as much as what they accomplish.
Findhelp is a healtech and social impact platform that connects all people in need to the programs that serve them with dignity and ease.
Which of your core values most defines how your team works together?
For us, it comes down to striking a genuine balance between putting high-level care into our work and putting that same care into each other. Because our entire team is deeply connected to our mission, everyone brings an incredible amount of dedication to what they do every day. Seeing your peers perform at that standard creates an amazing layer in our culture where everyone respects the work being done. But high performance cannot happen in a bubble. We place just as much value on making time to connect, support one another and actually have fun together. The nature of our work is extremely nuanced, so having an environment where people feel comfortable bouncing perspectives around and asking for help when they need it is critical. That blend of intense care for the mission, mutual respect and intentional connection is really what defines how we operate as a group.
How do you align new hires to your culture?
A strong culture does not just happen overnight; it really comes down to finding the right candidates from the very beginning and then constantly putting in effort. We align new hires to our culture by making teamwork and humility central focus points during our hiring process. In interviews, we ask targeted questions to learn how people actually operate within a team, how they navigate conflict and whether they are comfortable asking for help. A huge trait we look for is finding individuals who operate with very little ego. Ego can completely block great collaboration and get in the way of problem solving, especially on a team like ours where bouncing ideas off each other is essential. By making sure we hire people who leave their ego at the door, share our values and enjoy collaborative work, bringing them into our daily rhythm should feel natural.
How do you celebrate employees who live your values in action?
We celebrate our people through a mix of immediate, visible appreciation and long-term professional trust. In every team meeting, we set aside dedicated time for anyone to submit “glows.” These are public shout-outs where team members read praise for their peers out loud, giving everyone a chance to highlight great work and supportive behavior in real time. Beyond peer recognition, we believe a meaningful way to celebrate people who live our values is by promoting them and expanding their responsibilities. Rewarding cultural alignment and hard work with career advancement shows our team that we recognize them as true experts in their roles. Giving them ownership over broader areas of impact sends a clear message that we trust them, which reinforces our core values across the entire organization.
Identity Digital is an internet infrastructure company that makes sure web addresses work seamlessly.
Which of your core values most defines how your team works together?
For us, it’s ‘we work as one team.’ We work together and think differently, creating a flexible, inclusive space for people of all backgrounds to thrive through honest communication, personal growth and shared success.
We have remote and hybrid employees located across five countries and seven offices. Managers and teams regularly collaborate across sites and time zones. This value is the foundation for how we work together successfully.
Our values show up in our benefits and programs, as much as in the way we talk about culture. The annual virtual volunteer event runs in two sessions, so remote and hybrid employees in every time zone can take part. We also schedule training with local time zones in mind wherever we can and we shape our benefits and holidays around what matters culturally in each location.
We encourage our leaders to invest in bringing people together in person whenever possible. Leaders create opportunities for teams to connect at our various sites, building relationships and volunteering in local communities, alongside strategy. Personal connection strengthens how we collaborate, which ultimately benefits our customers.
How do you align new hires to your culture?
Alignment starts before someone joins us. Our recruiting process includes questions tied directly to our values, which helps candidates understand our culture as they evaluate whether we’re the right fit for them.
Our values are ingrained into all parts of the employee lifecycle, from new hire orientation and onboarding, through development conversations, to the business decisions we make as a company.
How do you celebrate employees who live your values in action?
Our program was created to make sure everyone has the opportunity to be recognized, whether through peer-to-peer shoutouts or manager and executive recognition. Each moment of recognition comes with a meaningful reward and our goal is to celebrate one another and share that recognition company-wide.
SentiLink is a fraud intelligence company, providing financial institutions and fintechs with purpose-built solutions for identity verification and fraud prevention.
Which of your core values most defines how your team works together?
’Deep understanding’ is the corporate value that I see most often in how we work together at SentiLink. My favorite example of this is our company-wide ’Donut’ session hosted every Thursday, where we are randomly paired up to investigate and label real-life fraud cases together. These provide a great way to meet other colleagues we may not interact with much in our roles and to ensure we all have a shared mental model of how fraud works in practice. Donuts are structured around themes related to our new product offerings or fraud research activities, so they also provide an excellent opportunity for everyone to be looped in on our most exciting developments.
How do you align new hires to your culture?
Every new hire begins with a three-month intensive ’fraud patrol’ program that focuses on how we investigate and label fraud cases at SentiLink. The goal of fraud patrol is to master our fraud label taxonomy, which is an important framework we use to discuss fraud cases internally and with our partners. Our program blends self-study and live guided sessions and culminates in graded assessments to ensure everyone has a strong grasp of our business before starting their day-to-day roles. As someone who did not join with formal fraud prevention experience, I found this incredibly effective in quickly building domain expertise and being able to ’talk smart’ about fraud.
How do you celebrate employees who live your values in action?
At SentiLink, we have several channels to recognize colleagues who demonstrate our corporate values. Every Friday, we dedicate a section of our all-hands presentation to recognize those who went the extra mile in their work over the past week. We also have multiple company-wide Slack channels for celebrating wins across our sales team, product and tech teams and other functions. For example, recently one of our new joiners was recognized for being the first employee outside of our fraud intelligence team to receive a perfect score on the assessment used in our fraud onboarding program.
OmniCable is a redistributor of wire and cable and electrical products. OmniCable offers distributors products from the industry’s leading manufacturers.
Which of your core values most defines how your team works together?
Our core values are the foundation of our business strategy and all five are reflected through employee contributions every day. It is hard to choose just one!
“Dependability — we’re passionately focused on exceeding expectations and honoring our commitments” most defines how our team works together.
How do you align new hires to your culture?
It starts during our selection process. Hiring managers demonstrate Curiosity about each candidate, describing how we support an ongoing, self-motivated pursuit of knowledge. Once selected, our new hires receive a welcome kit to demonstrate “family” and to provide our written commitment to the core values and our culture. During onboarding, new hires will witness “humility,” “inclusion” and “dependability” in the actions of their team members and the collaboration between different teams and leaders. How we live our values is how we sustain the incredible culture we are known for — we “put people first,” “thrive on collaboration,” “consistently deliver” and “think big, act small.”
How do you celebrate employees who live your values in action?
Celebrating employees is made easy through our rewards and recognition platform. Leaders and employees are given points each quarter to spend on recognizing one another, celebrating milestones and thanking each other. The points are redeemed for a variety of rewards — from practical household items to unique gifts, to fun experiences like concert tickets or vacation vouchers and of course, gift cards! Recognition is described through our core values, creating an opportunity for employees to see how the values are part of the everyday experience.
I am especially proud of our culture and communications committee — a volunteer group made up of line-level employees, supervisors and managers all working together to cultivate, nurture and lead the culture and what it means to live it daily. They plan events, community service opportunities and celebrations — including a month-long employee appreciation Month, SPARK month — share, promote, amplify, remember, kudos.
Finally, we annually recognize three team members who exemplify our core values with the Bill Gray Award — our most coveted honor. Winners receive a cash prize and a donation to their charity of choice.
Alaffia is a claims operations partner for health plans that uses expert clinicians and transparent AI, to deliver insights, automation and better outcomes across the claims lifecycle.
Which of your core values most defines how your team works together?
At Alaffia, a core value of ours is “we are team players.” That means we win together, we share knowledge openly, we collaborate across teams and we believe that transparency and open-mindedness make everyone better. A healthy balance of collaboration and autonomy has been a core part of how we’ve built Alaffia from the start and as we continue to grow, it’s something we’re intentional about preserving.
How do you align new hires to your culture?
During the interview process, each interviewer is accessing candidates for culture fit — this helps to ensure that aside from acumen and ability to perform well in a role, each individual brought on to the team will fit into the culture we have worked hard to build and maintain. In addition, when onboarding new employees, we ensure that they’re welcomed into an inviting, inclusive environment and provide an abundance of resources to help them get acquainted with our culture and values. All new team members receive a welcome package, have immediate access to “Alaffia University” for training and have opportunities to connect with the founders via our monthly CEO dinners for new hires local to our HQ (or co-founder lunches for new remote hires).
How do you celebrate employees who live your values in action?
As we have a distributed workforce at Alaffia, we have different ways of showing recognition and celebrating the employees who embody our values and showcase excellence. Virtually, we have a “shoutouts” channel on Slack, where anyone on the team can recognize others for their hard work. We also hold monthly “all hands” meetings, where individuals who’ve modeled our core values or set a new standard are recognized. We celebrate employees’ work anniversaries by sending a thoughtful gift to thank them for their continued contribution to the organization.
