Don’t let stereotypes kill your culture

One of the potential dangers of a successful workplace culture is confirmation bias. When everyone shares not only the same values, but also ways of thinking and even types of experiences, you can find yourself operating in an “echo chamber” without even realising it. The culture of family and honesty at SAP Concur is incredibly important to us, but at the same time we need to be constantly questioning the status quo that we’ve created.

My colleague Laura has written something very insightful about why we shouldn’t hire millennials – even though we’ve most recently brought on some of our youngest employees yet. She says this not out of any prejudice, but entirely the opposite: hiring based on stereotypes about age and years of experience can be fatally myopic to any business.

Laura makes a good point when she writes that “when we get rid of labels like millennial, we open a two-way street for learning”. If you want a culture that revolves around honesty and trust, any such labelling can quickly impede an individual’s willingness to speak up – especially in Asia where most employees are already quite cautious about openly stating their opinions. The more we do to remove those labels, the closer the members of our corporate family can become…and the faster we can grow together.

SAP Concur certainly resembles a modern family much more than your traditional Asian household: age doesn’t determine who’s right, rather ideas which can be proven to succeed end up winning out. Sometimes that is challenging, because you have to admit that despite all your years of experience you might not know best! But it means we all are constantly growing and, even more importantly, helping one another grow.