What Cultural Diversity Means to Us
Tina Chern
At PSPDFKit, we believe that cultural diversity is a strength that should be embraced and celebrated. While we typically steer clear of speaking on politics as a company, we feel with recent events in world politics over the past months that it’s as good of time as any to talk about our core values. We recognize the immigration ban in the U.S is not a light-hearted matter, therefore, we think this is a perfect opportunity to comment on our belief in cultural diversity, to tell the story of why and how we embrace individual differences, and ultimately seek to foster cultural competence as a fast-growing multinational company.
One Vision
Our team is a group of citizens of the world. We come from 17 different countries working together on one vision. Beyond creating premium products to deliver the best user experience, our vision includes promoting a working culture that empowers everyone in the team.
Cultural competence is not an easy goal to achieve, considering we have 30 plus team members each coming from different cultural backgrounds working closely in pursuit of perfection. We often have different opinions; We often feel strongly about our own ideas; and we often express those differences passionately. However, the way we empower our people is by embracing the differences. Cultural diversity is a crucial drive for any team, company or society to accelerate into progress. Through diversity, we are inspired to bring our best to the game, challenge each other, and rise above to make the collective vision tangible.
Dynamic Working Culture
In our effort to lead by example in the tech industry, we relentlessly promote a dynamic working culture. We host work retreats at least twice a year, ensure our team enjoys a work life balance with flexible working hours and the option to work remotely from just about anywhere in the world. These are our promises to our people and we take them seriously. We recognize individual uniqueness as an essential part of our foundation. We know without these differences, our company would be starved of creativity and productivity; moreover, we would not be who we are today without them.
It is a core belief at PSPDFKit that every individual is empowered to influence. One can influence the company by his or her talents. The company can influence its people and communities by relinquishing discrimination, vice versa. We’ve learned from our experience that people are truly at their greatest when they feel that they can trust each other. There’s no hierarchy and no division between citizenships.
Tech Community
We are all leaders in our own life. While there are two sides to any coin and multiple paths to success, we believe a company’s core values ultimately leads it into advancement or into regression. At PSPDFKit, we’ve made a conscious decision to champion cultural diversity, open-mindness, and embrace our differences as core values, as we believe it is the best way to advance our company.
A company is a miniature society. In light of recent world events, we feel the need to join other tech companies and stand up for what has made and continues to drive PSPDFKit’s success. We believe a company should be a reflection of its employees. All it takes is one team at a time to improve cultural integration. And one team member at a time to break down the walls of discrimination. At PSPDFKit, we strive to do all of these, and will continue to execute what we believe is the right thing to do for our people as part of the tech community.
