When we ask new recruits what attracted them to Sportsbet, a very common answer given is “you seem to have a great culture”.
Yup, we do.
With one of our organisational values being ‘Our Fun, Their Fun’ — we do a pretty good job of bringing it to life through:
- Small day-to-day interactions — e.g. banter among teammates — “Oh you’re not feeling well and lost your voice? Thank goodness I don’t have to listen to you talk today!”
- Team meetings — e.g. has someone not showed up? They’re getting all the action items!
- Leadership & Staff events — e.g. in a game of cricket, any staff member who bowled an executive out meant that Sportsbet would contribute an extra $50 to charity. And there were quite a few outs.
- The environment — collaboration zones, quiet spaces, mingling areas, responsible gambling banners everywhere (even in the toilets), motivational posters and an abundance of free food from bread, cereals, fruit, tea & coffee to Friday drinks from 4pm.
But more recently, it’s also become evident in the Slack channels created.
Here’s some of my favourite ones within the Technology group at Sportsbet
Slack Channels
#free_food_vultures
The keyword here is ‘caw’.
That means there’s some left over food that’s been placed in the kitchen from catered events.
Once the call is made, expect the leftovers to disappear within 5–10 mins.
Unless it’s a green salad. Then expect the ranting to occur for the next 2 hours on this channel.
Here’s how things are classified:
How appealing is the food? The number of ‘caws’ will tell you.
#teaclub
A bunch of tea fanatics who only need to post the tea emoji to indicate it’s tea time.
Post it anytime of the day to let people know that you need a cup of tea.
Those who are able to join reply with a tea emoji and gather in the kitchen within 5mins for a cuppa + quick chat.
#healthgoals
This channel is where we share and report back (and shame each other) on our health goals for the week.
For example, one team member had these goals:
- 40,000 steps per week
- Added points for Dance Floor workouts
On Mondays , we report back on progress with either a cross emoji or a tick emoji.
It’s a great way to help bring your whole-self to work and provides us a reason to hang s**t on each other when we don’t meet our goals.
Here’s some of my favourite replies from people justifying their outcome for the week:
- “I’ve prepared a short TED talk on why I believe I deserve a dash for the week of travel I’ve just undertaken. Hope you all can make it.”
- “I may not make it to receive my shaming personally — it’s a definite cross for me, unless watching Spartan on TV counts?”
- “Got my tick for last week, but somebody is going to need to supply me with a saline drip next week to have any possibility of exercise outside of the dance floor.”
- “Can’t wait for our ceremony today. I did over 108k steps last week. I’m gonna be all smug.”
#womenintech
The name says it all here but it actually means so much more.
The primary purpose of this channel is to ideate ways to share our brand as women in technology with the wider industry. As we work for a largely male centric brand and technology team, it’s important that we are able to easily connect and create a sense of belonging and inclusion.
Btw — anyone can join this channel, not just the ladies!
#tech-shoutouts
This channel is used for recognition of awesome effort and is our most used channel.
Anyone can do a quick shoutout by tagging a team member and selecting the company values that relate to their post. This has the added benefit of keeping organisational values front of mind. Others can then up-vote the shoutouts by giving the post a star emoji.
These were our top 3 values for the year:
Every month, the nominees AND nominators go into a draw to win several prizes and overall winners are announced at the end of the year.
