The Big 'Why' Behind Healthy Workplace Culture

Protenus recently achieved recognition as a Great Place to Work-Certified™ company for the second consecutive year. It is an honor we are immensely proud to receive, and we believe that it reflects the healthy company culture that each member of our team works hard to nurture and maintain.

The seeds of our thriving culture were planted at the company's inception in 2014. From the start, Protenus has offered favorable benefits in the interest of attracting top talent to help advance our business. We know that work isn't everything, nor should it be; in the absence of work-life balance, employee burnout becomes a hindrance to productivity, professional development, and organizational growth.

If you're interested in joining the Protenus team, click here to view open positions.

With this reality in mind, Protenus has maintained unlimited PTO as one of our core benefits. This flexibility has proven effective for massive employers such as LinkedIn, which in 2015 shifted to offering unlimited vacation time billed as "discretionary time off." Pat Wadors, LinkedIn's then-SVP of Global Talent Organisation, explained in a post the belief that DTO would give employees "the ability to better meet their personal needs, which will then allow them to bring their best self to work."

Outcomes, not processes

At Protenus, we too understand that unlimited PTO centers the focus on outcomes rather than on processes. We've also found that this policy can be successfully maintained as our company grows, along with the 12 weeks of paid time off we provide for new moms and dads.

Our parental leave policy in particular has been put to the test during the pandemic. At one point during this challenging time, 10 percent of our workforce — one in every 10 team members — was on parental leave. However, when looking at our company's overall performance, it's clear that continued flexibility has only served to make us stronger. Given sufficient time off for acclimating to parenthood, employees have been able to return from parental leave fully energized and focused on the task at hand, whether that's building our product pipeline or securing high-value contracts.

With a responsible team in place, "you can have a work-life balance friendly culture without sacrificing growth," says Protenus CEO Nick Culbertson. Rather than inhibiting opportunities, reasonable workforce management liberates team members to approach work with creativity and passion, which in turn drives organizational innovation.

Nimble team

The flexibility embedded in Protenus' workplace culture also enables us to adapt quickly under unpredictable circumstances. For instance, the work-from-home policy we adopted before the pandemic facilitated our abrupt transition to fully remote work last March as COVID-19 spread. One-third of full-time staff had already been working remotely, demonstrating the skills necessary for productivity in a home-office environment. This meant we had one less major upheaval to manage in an already chaotic time, and we had utmost confidence in our ability to work effectively from locations across the country. 

It's not a fluke that remote work has worked well for Protenus. According to a 2020 Forbes column, teleworkers are up to 40 percent more productive than their office counterparts, with an output increase of at least 4.4 percent. This extra productivity has been critical for Protenus as we compete for the attention of hospitals overwhelmed by COVID-19. As a compliance analytics provider in healthcare, we found that our work was made especially hard by the pandemic — but workplace flexibility allowed us to rise to the challenge. 

Retention and growth

No one benefits when employees attempt to tackle work while simultaneously juggling emergencies or major life events; the quality of work will suffer, as will employee wellbeing. Our unlimited PTO and generous parental leave policies prevent us from going down this dangerous path, but they also improve our posture as a sought-after employer. 

Building a strong workforce is no small feat, and we view flexibility as central to preserving and expanding ours. Even for the highest-paid employees, professional freedom is critically important, according to a 2018 TINYpulse report (which also showed that employees with a positive work-life balance were 10 percent more likely to be retained).

As we all navigate life during a pandemic, the need for balance is greater than ever, as is the need to maintain a strong workforce. By entrusting employees to make decisions about how and when they work, Protenus maintains the ability to readily serve our healthcare partners and advance the field of healthcare compliance analytics.

Interested in joining the Protenus team? Check out current openings on our Careers page.