From Efficiency to Empathy: The Cultural Transformation of “PrestaRock”

In the past two weeks, I’ve shared reflections on the conflict that had emerged — differences in mindset between employee and manager, tensions that seem only to intensify in today’s realities. In my prior posts I wove together the company’s history with thoughts on the present. But now let’s return and continue the story of PrestaRock. Nearly three years ago, to address exactly this issue (and to enable rapid growth), I decided to hire a dedicated person — an HR specialist.

The core objective was to do what I myself wasn’t good at, and what I didn’t want to relearn as a new skill: recruitment. I didn’t feel effective when it came to soft skills, so this move needed to solve both problems — to help us reach maximal efficiency. The volume of work was so large that even a two- or threefold expansion would have left us unable to meet client expectations — we needed solutions then and there.

Even though in earlier years I had a fairly clear understanding of PrestaRock’s culture and what it meant to be part of the “crew,” this time, in collaboration with a truly empathetic HR specialist skilled in soft skills, we managed to elevate our collective activities and company celebrations to another level.

The Tradition of “Book Evenings”

Almost right away we noticed that our team leads had goals to read books and hit annual Goodreads targets — ten or twenty books a year. Why not make it a company tradition and involve more employees? After all, one book can change a career, and reading two or three on work themes can help someone become twice the specialist.

Though for some employees our last-Thursday-of-the-month meetings might have looked like a cult — where it was unclear what we discussed — we still often enticed even the most skeptical to attend, simply out of curiosity. They’d listen to our summaries, quotes, and thoughts drawn from life and work, and how we’d interpreted what the authors were trying to say.

I dare say that this tradition helped me reach record reading numbers — over 30 books per year. I believe it contributed to others’ achievements then, and still today.

“Cake Days” — Almost Weekly

In my early career days, when writing these entries, I bragged that our teambuildings could rival those of big companies with tasting dinners. Now we managed to enrich the shared pre-lunch table almost weekly with cakes brought in by team members.

I remember it was fun to hear people talk about buying kitchen appliances, blenders, and telling how their entire kitchen looked like it had endured a war, because it was their first time baking a cake. But they baked nonetheless. From tiramisu to lemon or chocolate cakes — it became our everyday life, something even those who only brought a sandwich for lunch couldn’t resist.

In summer, colleagues would bring literal buckets of šaltibarščiai (cold beet soup), joking that if we expanded further, we’d need to order industrial kitchen containers to prepare it all.

Eurovision Nights and Watching Basketball Games in the Office

It may seem trivial — standard in many offices — but we elevated our Eurovision watching: from HR we’d get ballots for voting or giving feedback, and we’d sit as a “jury,” score participants, and later await the final results and see who guessed more winners and won a prize — gift vouchers for their oracle knowledge. There were other amusements in the office too: e.g. watching table football championships, etc.

“PrestaRock” Academy for Testers and Programmers

Working in tandem and maintaining our in-house talent development efforts, we decided to follow the example of major Lithuanian companies and organize our own academies. It wasn’t difficult — we already had well-documented and standardized onboarding processes, so based on them we selected and refined material for newcomers (entry-level) wishing to embark on IT paths to become programmers or testers.

Over several months, we held selection sessions every Wednesday, which helped us attract talented specialists and rapidly expand the PrestaRock team. The knowledge gained, I trust, even by those we didn’t hire, became a springboard in other companies or organizations.

“KTU Wanted” Events

To find those specialists and opportunities, we could also present ourselves at KTU — one of Lithuania’s best IT-specialist–training universities. For several years in a row, at the career fair organized by them, we spoke to high school students and university students about how to start properly, why it’s important to build a solid foundation, and how to choose your first workplace wisely.

We hoped that by sharing these ideas, and by showing my own example — from programmer to manager — we’d attract equally talented young specialists with career hunger. I’d say this project succeeded and became one of our more successful initiatives.

Achieved Goal — Personal Attention to Each Person

And despite not surprising anyone with elaborate entertainments (apart from maybe the book evenings), we had reached a perhaps slightly imbalanced level where each person was personally invited to group lunches, each person personally asked how they feel or what their thoughts are, and then there was also our daily SAFETY indicator check. Eventually we even got complaints like “how come you didn’t remind me about something that was on the calendar?”

The goals — more personal attention, more fun, more sense of community — became our everyday life. And I, as a manager, could focus and stay operational in daily tasks knowing someone was looking after my team — and doing it properly.