What principles do we work by together at Vertrical? How does our recruiting work? What is so important about feedback?

Here you find a bit about our general rules and company culture that we set for ourselves internally.👇

We build impactful DigitalHealth products for the best Scale-Ups in Silicon Valley. 

Our most important values that describe our idea of working with each other are:

1. People first: The well-being of people always comes first for us. Everyone should support others in this. As an organisation, we create structures that safeguard us.
2. Personal responsibility: Everyone in the company takes full responsibility for resolving their own tensions, organising themselves and finding the best way to do their own work. If needed, we support and coach each other by asking: "What do you need?"
3. Commitment: When we take responsibility for something or make commitments, we stick to them. If something changes in our commitments or predictions, we inform all the people who should know.
4. Transparency: We make important information within the company transparent. We share all information anyone needs to fulfill their roles and everybody should try their best to avoid information silos. For example, rather than sharing information via DMs in Slack, we prefer to use dedicated channels. Transparency has its limits where legitimate personal interests are at stake. For example, we offer to collect and anonymize feedback before sharing it. We are also transparent to the outside world to the extent that it does not harm the company or any of us individually or leaks sensitive information.
5. Open, polite and constructive communication: We talk to each other, not about each other. We say what we think, but try not to hurt other’s feelings. We do our very best to speak to each other in a non-violent way and give each other regular feedback in a constructive way. We all are always open to work out our conflicts and we encounter each other with an open attitude that shows a willingness to learn and compromise.
6. Low-ego mindset: We put egos and individual interests behind common goals and the purpose of the company in our joint work. If our own strong egos show up, we point them out to each other and learn from them.
7. Consent is king: We decide on our own responsibility and ask for objections. Where there is no immediate harm, we try things out and correct our decision later if necessary.
8. Safe space: Working involves mistakes from time to time and also failure. We want to create and hold a safe space, where mistakes can be talked about openly and without fear. We agree that we hold mistakes and failure free of blame, as they are the basis of our learning and further development.
9. Impact: In everything we do, we strive above all to create the maximum impact in the long term in terms of our purpose. 
10. Remain pioneers: Our aspiration is to always be a few steps ahead of the mainstream. This includes constantly educating ourselves, as well as continuously trying out new practices and ideas on ourselves.

All behaviour in the company should be in line with these values. Where ever deviations become apparent, we give each other feedback.

• Recruiting at Vertrical is not only meant to fill open vacancies but to win the best talents for our team. And this means we want to ensure that new people are both - a professional and personal fit. We want to hire people who share our values, ideas and vision and support and empower us all in building and strengthening our company culture. Therefore the personal and cultural fit is a mandatory criterion which we want to take every person who is included in a hiring team very seriously.
• Our Recruiting is based upon collaboration, however the according guidelines like EU-GDPR and other legal requirements must apply. Every team member that is part of a hiring team (Role ‘Recruiting’) is obliged to treat the candidates data confidential. It is not permitted to store, send or share candidate data outside our ATS. If you have any questions about this, please visit the section Data & privacy
• Our recruiting is bias-free and standardised. Our recruiting processes therefore include for example the use of interview kits and scorecards. In this way, we ensure that our personnel selection is as objective as possible.
• As an organisation, it is important to us that our employees reflect the diversity that exists in the real world. Therefore, we explicitly set ourselves the goal of achieving the greatest possible diversity in our personnel selection.
• Last but not least: Any employee can raise the need to recruit more people or propose new roles, functions or positions. It should be specified exactly what the roles and hours are and in which department the position should be located. Proposals can be submitted to the People & Culture Department and will then be considered by B- and C-Level.

 - in progress...