What’s in a ranking: Behind our Top 5 Best Place to Work award
We’re excited to share that for the second time in a row, Asana has been named a Top 5 Best Place to Work by FORTUNE and Great Place to Work. We’re especially proud of this achievement because it’s the fourth award we’ve received from these two organizations this year: #1 Best Workplace for Technology, #1 Best Workplace in the Bay Area, and Top 20 Best Workplace for Millennials. We’re in great company, with our customers Thumbtack, Quora, Pluralsight, Yext, and Carbon Black also making the list!
From the beginning, Asana was built with a deliberate, intentional culture. It takes a village, and every single Asana plays a pivotal role in building, growing, and scaling our culture, helping it evolve to meet the needs the business. (Part of that role is making sure we’re also having fun in the process, too.)
The process: How we measure up
This award means a lot to us because of the particular methodology that Great Place to Work uses to evaluate the thousands of organizations that participate. The first is getting insights directly from employees.
85% of the award is determined based on unfiltered feedback from anonymous employee surveys. The surveys measure employees’ feelings of trust and their ability to reach their full potential at Asana, along with innovation, values, and leadership effectiveness. For us, seeing that 100% of Asanas report having great pride in what they do is a huge achievement in and of itself.
Participating organizations are also evaluated on key business metrics: Do they show consistent, growing financial performance and a strong business trajectory? After all, a great culture can only get you so far if it fails to support the business’ ability to drive results, which in turn helps every employee recognize the value and impact of their work.
With every year we’ve participated in Great Place to Work, our business performance has only gotten better. Just last month, we announced six straight quarters of accelerating growth rate, which is now pacing around 90% year over year, and 50,000 paying customers. As our co-founder and CEO Dustin Moskovitz said, these achievements are “a testament to the value we place on ensuring that our employees are connected to our mission, to help humanity thrive by enabling all teams to work together effortlessly.”
Top 2018 insights: What makes Asana a great workplace
Every year, Great Place to Work publishes a summary of insights on the biggest trends they see across the best workplaces. Above all, they find that, “A great workplace is one where you trust the people you work for; have pride in what you do; and enjoy the people you work with.”
To give you a peek behind the scenes and a taste of what life is like at Asana, we wanted to show how we measure up to these trends by sharing some of the key parts of our culture:
1. People trust their leaders at the Best Workplaces
Trust is something that we believe goes both ways — leaders create the structure that allows everyone at the company to thrive and build a trusting environment. At Asana, we create a culture of trust by taking and giving full responsibility. Asana is an experiment in the idea that the responsibility should be distributed among a great team of peers who respect and trust each other. We practice this through areas of responsibility (or AoRs). We action AoRs by using our own product to create clarity around who’s doing what, by when.
Through these practices, 99% of Asanas report that “management genuinely seeks and responds to suggestions and ideas.” There are no sacred cows at Asana, and no egos — everyone at the company is directly responsible for something that affects the business, and those responsibilities are distributed across individual team members, not just senior leadership.
2. Great employers spur innovation
Great Place to Work takes business trajectory and financial stability into account, as those factors typically result in more innovation, which in turn creates a challenging, more exciting work environment. We think of innovation across every aspect of the company—from how we grow and scale, to the technology we use, all the way to enabling our customers to be more innovative.
We love to see how our product is helping our customers deliver on their missions faster and more efficiently. Like Connected Care Group, who is dedicated to preventing the 60,000 deaths that occur in the United States every year from drug overdoses. They were able to save their business by using Asana to roll out agile processes in a timeline of months instead of years. Or Viessmann, at the forefront of digital transformation, who uses Asana to enable the entire organization to have mobile, user-friendly access to important company information at any time.
Our mission is all about improving collaboration so that teams can focus on the work that matters most, which means more time for creativity and pursuing new ideas. In fact, 99% of Asanas report great challenges as a reason they love working here. The complexity of delivering our product vision for millions of users in over 190 countries brings massive challenges and even better rewards.
3. Fun at work drives retention
Challenging work and a growing market opportunity leave us pretty busy, so it’s important that we have the space to enjoy each other’s company and celebrate wins or learn from failures together. With every major product, marketing, or company launch, we host a big happy hour in our theater with drinks, food, and sometimes life-sized arcade games. On Fridays, our culinary team makes a special dessert for everyone to enjoy just because. It’s no surprise that 99% of Asanas report having great rewards and a great atmosphere.
We love working here, and we think you will too
We’re so proud of what our team has achieved so far, and there is no shortage of opportunity ahead. It’s a special time to be at Asana, and we’re growing our team all over the world in San Francisco, New York, and Dublin, across Engineering, Product, Sales and Marketing, Recruiting, and more. Check out all of our open roles and be a part of this exciting journey.
