At our recent ConnectCentral 2018 conference, futurist Jacob Morgan shared the three keys to a successful employee experience: culture, physical space, and technology. As a company with offices throughout the world, RingCentral strives to provide a great experience for all of our employees and be a global employer of choice.
That’s why we were thrilled when RingCentral’s Xiamen, China, office was recently awarded the prestigious Liepin Extraordinary Employer Award for the second consecutive year. It’s no coincidence that both awards have been received under the leadership of Marc Chan, VP and GM of RingCentral China. Marc has rapidly grown RingCentral’s footprint in China and now leads more than 300 employees in the Xiamen office, which was first established in 2011.
I sat down with Marc to learn about his philosophy on employee experience and how they’re creating a winning combination of culture, space, and technology.
How does RingCentral Xiamen differ from other businesses around you?
It would be easy to talk about our cutting-edge products, but the differentiation we’re most proud of is our commitment to our people. Many local companies in Xiamen focus more on their short-term financial goals than they do on their most valued resource—their employees. Long hours, working weekends—these can boost your bottom line for a little while, but it won’t last.
At RingCentral, we want our employees to succeed. They are our most valuable asset. We focus on their individual growth and help them progress in their career. We want our employees to enjoy what they do, not just put in a day’s work for a day’s wage. We work to ensure that all of our employees have a proper work-life balance. We also encourage diversity throughout the company.
The benefits of this approach speak for themselves. We retain a significant number of our employees and are one of the few public companies in Xiamen with stable revenue growth.
This is your second year winning this award. What’s your secret?
Employee experience is of primary importance. We worked to establish a culture of collaboration and transparency so employees would feel empowered, trusted, part of something bigger, and ready to align with our company goals. Employees in China are encouraged to share what they know and to learn from each other—not only within China, but to also share with other employees over the world.
Once we had established this foundation, we were able to attract the very best talent from every major city in China. We’re proud that people love to come to work here.
What specific actions did you take in creating a winning office culture?
We focused our efforts in three areas. First, we established a strong HR team, which we call our Employee Success team. We look at employee experience as an end-to-end process, and the Employee Success team drives that process, everything from providing an excellent recruiting and onboarding experience to continuous employee care through learning opportunities, mentoring, and multiple programs for career development.
Second, we increased our management capability in the organization through promotions and talent acquisitions. We’ve found that by doing this, productivity and the quality of work has increased and our employees are reporting higher levels of job satisfaction.This also gives our employees greater opportunities to learn new skills and then contribute to the company’s success by using those skills.
Third, we nurtured a culture of innovation. For example, we organize “Hackathon” events every year, which give our employees free rein to engage in cross-department collaboration, try out new and innovative ideas, and then to realize those ideas as prototypes. Many of these prototypes have made their way into our products.
What can you tell me about the physical space? How does this impact employee experience?
To accommodate the recent growth in our workforce as well as plan for future growth, RingCentral Xiamen opened a new office in 2017, one that provides employees with an enhanced work environment. It also features spectacular beach views! We have already expanded to an additional floor, giving our employees more collaboration spaces, meeting rooms, and training facilities.
Our office design also serves to enhance our image as a Silicon Valley headquartered company in Xiamen. It projects who we are as a company and helps us attract and retain top talent.
As a team engineering the RingCentral product, do you see a relationship between the Xiamen employee experience and the experience of the customers who will be using the product?
This year at ConnectCentral, our COO Dave Sipes reminded us that successful companies are the ones that provide high levels of employee and customer engagement. At RingCentral Xiamen, we have established a strong employee engagement ethos. Our employees have created a rich company culture, one that supports and executes our company strategy to provide our customers with a collaborative and unified solution for business communications. We believe our investments in our employees have directly contributed to stronger customer engagement and better outcomes for our business.
Want to be part of a winning team and culture? Visit the RingCentral careers page to learn more.
Originally published Jan 17, 2019, updated Jan 30, 2023
