Interview: ExploCrowd's unique culture creates room for innovation

This is an interview by the team at Great Place to Work from January 2023, translated from Norwegian to English by our team.

By Jannike Hjelle from Great Place to Work

ExploCrowd is a Norwegian company that combines teamwork, innovation and creativity to accelerate exploration, production and CO2 storage on the Norwegian continental shelf. They currently have 23 employees and were certified as a "great place to work" in December 2022. Their results from the Trust Index paint a picture of an organization where the employees experience a high degree of trust and experience their workplace as a fantastic place to work . We therefore had a chat with Sidsel Lindsø, CEO of ExploCrowd to hear what it is that makes their workplace so unique.

ExploCrowd believe in doing things their own way and the team have had hypotheses about leadership and motivation that they wanted to test out, and they have made an effort to create a workplace with a high degree of mutual trust. The motivation for making it happen was the belief that the greater the degree of trust that exists between people, the more you can save on systems and control, better collaboration and integration - which in turn provides good results on the bottom line.

"Of course we knew that things were going in the right direction, but we wanted more insight into how we stand in relation to other companies and their performance, because it will help us identify areas where we could improve," says Sidsel. "We also thought that the results of an employee survey would make the conversation about the company's culture easier, and wanted to use the results as a tool."

As a CEO Sidsel has the ultimate responsibility of ensuring a good company culture where people thrive. Photo by Anne Lise Norheim.

ExploCrowd has many young employees and when you come straight from university you have little awareness or experience of how a company culture affects you. Those who have a long career know the difference between ‘good cultures’ that build people up, and ‘bad cultures’ that over time have a negative effect on trust and motivation. ExploCrowd hoped for the opportunity to build further awareness among all employees about how to create a workplace where people thrive, and what actually works.

"When we got the results, we were a bit blown away. The team was presented with the results by Bjørn Hviding from Great Place to Work, who went through the individual elements before an open discussion with clarifying questions and good reflections on why we had a high score in some areas, and addressed lower scores in other areas. Much of it we had reflected on in other contexts, but something was new, and thoughts were shared from both completely new people in the group and some of those who have much more experience. What was special was that everyone left the meeting a little more proud to be part of ExploCrowd.”

In the time since the employee survey, the company has experienced more reflection and commitment among the employees and has seen a marked positive change: it is quite clear that the camaraderie is even stronger, and that the employees now show even more initiative now than before.

Great Place To Work contributed with expertise within mapping out culture

The claims in the survey go right to the core and reveal the essence of a company's culture. For ExploCrowd, it has meant that the individual pieces of the puzzle have become much clearer. The hypotheses they have believed in have now received a professional grounding, and that is of great importance. Now there is a deep understanding of what they have created and how everyone can contribute to creating a good work culture where people thrive. Everyone in the company are conscious about the building blocks that create a good company culture.

The certification means a lot in the competition for new customers

ExploCrowd already has a good reputation in the market and finds that many people make contact and would like to work for them. The certification provides visible proof that the stories told actually represent what it is like to work for them, and increases credibility in the market.

"For us, it's just as much about recruiting customers. It is clear to everyone that we in ExploCrowd have done things in a different way, and it has taken people some time to understand exactly what it is that we do different. Several customers have actually understood it, and we have often been chosen as a supplier because of the way we work, and especially the way we work together with our customers. The certification from Great Place to Work makes it easier for us to communicate specifically what it is that we do differently, and why."

What is special about your culture?

ExploCrowd's goal is to build a High Performance Team where the people are motivated by delivering high-level performance. The hypothesis is that we must create the framework for individuals to be able to deliver their absolute best, and for this to happen we have to make room for our individual differences. Everyone is motivated differently and our idea was that by focusing on people's strengths, we would achieve something extraordinary.

"With us, you can be who you are, and we see that as a strength."

Sidsel emphasizes that they are transparent about everything they are legally allowed to, and that building trust and ensuring that they are effective is an important part of that. One example is transparency around what employees receive in pay, and this naturally demands a lot from the leadership as the differences must be explained, but it also ensures that the differences are actually fair. Another example is that the CEO and everyone else shares all information related to ongoing business on a continuous basis, and this means that everyone is be up-to-date and have access to the same information at the same time. More brains are at work. This again means that the organisation is ready to turn around quickly when we have to, because everyone understands the context of why it has to happen.

"Of course it is a challenge that we work virtually and are distributed over more than ten geographical locations, but we manage it. And that is clearly one of our competitive advantages."

In a globalised world, we have to deal with the fact that what happens on the other side of the world can affect us and our business. It also means that businesses must be able to seize opportunities and change direction, quickly.

A company with a culture where the employees thrive and everyone has access to the necessary information will have competitive advantages and the opportunity to turn around quickly and deliver under new conditions. But there is also another aspect: the power of innovation.

A business that practices trust-based company culture forms the basis for testing opportunities and room for new ideas to grow. Innovation happens when you least expect it and we believe that culture is the core of facilitating innovation. At ExploCrowd, we have had the privilege of experiencing value-creating innovation countless times, and that motivates us to test even more and see what is possible to achieve, concludes Sidsel.

Read more about Great Place to Work, their mission and other certified Norwegian companies via this link.