10 years in the Making at Macquarie Cloud Services
2020 has been an eventful year by everyone’s standards, for me personally it also marked my ten-year anniversary here at Macquarie Cloud Services. So much has evolved but one thing that has remained a key pillar of who we are, is our focus on people.
Roll the clocks back.
Let’s start at the very beginning. Back in 2010 when I was in the market for a new role, I put together a job search with a bunch of technical terms and immediately got excited when I found an organization seeking a people manager. They were looking for a people manager for a large engineering team – who does that, normally it’s all about the tech – yes, please! I immediately wanted to know more about this role and this company.
Fast forward the early recruitment stages, walking out of the final interview, I felt blue: I stuffed it up, I was sure of it. “How do you build culture?” What kind of interview question was that? And why was the interviewer still doggedly chasing me to expand on my answer 30 minutes later? I got it, culture is important in this place. And so are people. Post the interview there was a frank phone call where I learned that I didn’t stuff up, in fact, they were thrilled by my honesty and positivity to the topic. So all that remained, was a couple of questions around my ability to build a personal rapport with a large all-male team. I laughed, that gender mix was pretty typical in this industry, but they still took up my suggestion to reference check the 2IC from my current role. They really were taking Jim Collins “get the right people on the bus” to heart.
Now with that interview a decade ago, it’s safe to say our commitment to culture has not faded. We’re still resolute about selecting the right people based on alignment to our values and purpose, and on their overriding desire to make a difference, to instinctively drive to transform and make things better and easier, every time. We celebrate, recognize and reward these behaviours and I suspect, more importantly, we won’t abide passive or disengaged people on our team.
Everyone has a role to play.
More recently, I recall a conversation when reviewing the Great Place to Work paperwork, it was a simple statement… “Make sure you talk to Marianne in the People team, she’s the culture person”. I stopped and looked at him before I replied with “In Cloud Services, culture is everyone’s responsibility”. It is. And we’re never complacent. We survey, we review, we listen, together we plan and improve, but most importantly we challenge. Yes, discussions may be tough. Never combatant but provoking and absolutely mandatory if we are to be the best place to work. And we are determined.
People and culture are important to us every day and so we see it fitting that we share our stories, approach and behaviour to feature as one of Australia’s Best Places to Work, with #2 position ranking under our belts in 2023. But for me, from my interview to this day, we always remember culture at Macquarie Cloud Services is not about winning awards, it’s about ensuring our customers and colleagues win – all day every day.
