A look at how theAsianparent.com scaled culture as we expanded across Asia.

1. Scaling culture
theAsianparent Case Study

2.
1- About
2- Culture – what, why?
3- How we built culture
4- CEOs Job
Agenda

3. About
1

4. About us
Content,
Community
platform for
parent in Asia
Over 6.5 million
users monthly
Vision is to be a
mum’s best friend

5. Early days
• Set up end 2009
• 5 employees by
end 2010
• Boot strapped
• 1 country

6. Holy cow!
• Took my first vacation a
year later
• Team resigned when I
was on holidays!
• Cried buckets – tried to
figure out what
happened
• Siloed culture, barriers
to collaboration
• Picked myself up and
decided to focus on HR
and Culture

7. Now
• 65 Full-timers, 20 part-
timers as of beginning
2015
• 4 countries
• Voted world’s most
democratic workplace
• Attrition rate is down
• Most colleagues stay
for a minimum of 3 years

8. Culture –
What, why?
2

9. What is
culture?
The behaviours, beliefs,
values, & symbols that a
group of people
accept, generally
without thinking
Passed along by
communication &
imitation

10. The best
investment
Often, doesn’t cost a
dime!
Fosters innovation, finds
talent in unexpected
places, empowers
employees at all levels
Increases overall
happiness
Happiness increases
productivity by up to
31%, Sales by 37% and
creativity by 3 xs – HBR

11. How we
build culture
3

12. 5 simple
steps
Hire right
Communicate
Employee Perks
Team Bonding
Managing across cultures

13.
Hire right
• Don’t just focus on
personality, but also on
skillsets
• Interview aggressively
with those skillsets in
mind
• Once hired, on board
well
(Orientation, understand
company culture,
values, ensure they
understand their job, set
OKRs)
Analy'cal
Wri'ng
Edi'ng
SEO
Tech
Management
Skills
Integrity
Direct
Tenacity
Editorial
Strategist
Skillset
Analy'cal
Wri'ng
SEO
Integrity
Tenacity
Amanda’s
Skillset

14.
Communicate
• Daily stand-ups
• Internal chat on FB
groups, Line and Slack
• Weekly all hands
meetings combined
with team lunch
• Weekly PPFs
• CEO has coffee daily
with 1 random
employee

15.
Standardized
employee
perks
• New hire swag
(Namecards, Mugs, tote
bags, tshirts)
• Free lunches across
countries
• Insurance
• Equal number of public
holidays
• Helps them feel they
are Ticklers first and
everything else second

16.
Team
bonding
Yearly retreats (based
on departments)
• Monthly outings –
movies, dinners,
drinks, sports, etc
• All festivals all
celebrated across
offices

17.
Managing
interculturally
Each department has a
Head who is incharge of
various local teams.
Head of Editorial sits in
Philippines
Head of Marketing sits in
Singapore
Head of Analytics sits in
India
Forces collaboration
intercompany and
understanding of various
cultures

18.
My job as
CEO
Values of company vs
Values of CEO
“Recruiting,
developing, and
managing my amazing
team across #Asia.”

19.
Thank you