Universal Workplace

Universal Workplace2022-04-15T07:47:49+00:00

Universal Workplace

Ultranauts’ work environment is intentionally designed to be inclusive of everyone, which we call a Universal Workplace. While the  concept of a Universal Workplace continues to evolve, it is underpinned by several Management Principles that have remained constant over time. These Principles define what is vital in the design of our organization, shape our workplace policies and practices, and guide our decisions and actions day in and day out.

Management Principles

At Ultranauts, our efforts to create a Universal Workplace are informed by six Management Principles:

Continuous Learning as an evergreen priority. To continue to evolve our capabilities and deliver superior value for our customers, we prioritize, invest in and enable our team’s ongoing learning & development.

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Mental Health as a business imperative. Protecting the mental health and wellbeing of our team is as important to us as delivering value to our customers and generating returns for our shareholders.

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Flexibility as the default choice. No single way of working, from where or when we work to how we communicate, is optimal for all of us, so we develop policies and practices with flexibility at their core.

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Inclusion as a design principle. To create an inclusive work environment, we don’t just rely on each other’s good intentions or individual actions, we design inclusion into the processes and systems that shape how we work.

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Transparency in decision making and work as a mutual expectation. As we differ in how we think and work, being open with each other, sharing context for our decisions, and providing visibility into what we’re doing is essential to building trust.

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Collaboration over competition as a cultural norm. As a team with many unique strengths, our true advantage comes from combining the strengths of multiple team members which can only be achieved through collaborative teams.

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Examples

At Ultranauts, our Universal Workplace is a work-in-progress. We still have much to do as we strive to meet the needs of our team and business while remaining true to our mission. We are excited to continue to learn and evolve our Universal Workplace, guided by our Management Principles and Design for Neurodiversity approach, and we will continue to push forward until we fully realize our vision of an organization that embraces diversity in all its forms and empowers our team to do our best work, together.

Continuous Learning as an evergreen priority2022-02-16T10:34:25+00:00
  • We help team members create learning Launchpads and professional Portfolios to support their career development and growth.
  • We provide formal L&D Allowances to provide team members with protected time to invest in developing their skills outside of on-the-job training.
  • We are developing the Ultranauts Academy which will provide self-paced training programs that will not only benefit our own team but also provide learning opportunities to those outside the company.
Mental Health as a business imperative2022-02-15T09:48:18+00:00
  • We track team Well-being Metrics on our management dashboard, e.g. Team Loneliness Score, and treat them with the same seriousness as financial and customer metrics because they are equally important indicators of the health of our business.
  • We have an annual Psychological Safety Audit conducted by an independent third party, the results of which are shared with our Board to ensure accountability. We view this as an important governance tool similar to our annual financial audit.
  • We regularly measure Team Experience on projects and intervene when group cohesion or individual wellbeing is at risk. Because we can only be successful when both our teams and customers have consistently positive experiences, continuously improving both team and customer experience are equally important to our business.
Flexibility as the default choice2022-02-15T09:46:21+00:00
  • We put measures in place to ensure live interactions have Multimodal Communication options, including options for video/audio, chat and transcription, which means each team member can communicate and contribute in a way that’s most comfortable and productive.
  • With everyone being able to Work from Home, outside of limited synchronous standups and meetings, team members decide not only where they work but when, which helps us work in the way that’s most productive for each of us
  • We structure salaried roles with options for Desired-Time-Equivalent work weeks, including full-time, three-quarters-time and half-time, with prorated salaries, so no team member has to choose between a stable salary and a desirable workload.
Inclusion as a design principle2022-02-15T09:45:52+00:00
  • We use Objective Recruiting practices universally, including structured interviews with scoring rubrics, multimodal communication options, and job tests for all applicants and all roles, ensuring a fair and transparent process.
  • We developed Inclusive Agile practices for our project teams, in order to remove those aspects of Agile and Scrum that can be counterproductive for neurodivergent engineers and improve the wellbeing and productivity of our cognitively diverse teams.
  • We are developing Design for Neurodiversity (DfN), a new pedagogy for experience design, and applying DfN to redesign our business processes in ways that resolve ambiguity, create engagement, increase autonomy and reduce sensory load
Transparency in decision making and work as a mutual expectation2022-02-15T09:44:35+00:00
  • We pioneered Community-Driven Promotions that rely on transparent skills requirements and benchmarks and peer expert validation of demonstrated skills, to determine promotion readiness and mitigate the potential for bias and favoritism
  • We have a Public Management Dashboard and publish notes from the weekly management meetings to provide every team member with visibility into the performance of the company and the priorities of the management team.
  • We encourage Knowledge Sharing across different projects and practice areas, both formally and informally, to share information and learn from each other’s experiences and surface opportunities for collaboration.
Collaboration over competition as a cultural norm2022-02-15T09:41:18+00:00
  • We rely on Shared Ownership of outcomes metrics for the business, mitigating the risk of a siloed management team and misaligned organization.
  • We strive to foster Collaborative Decision Making wherever possible, including at the project level through Inclusive Agile, and at the enterprise level by inviting ideas and input when developing organizational policies and plans.
  • We are moving toward Co-creation of solution strategies and customer value with the support of Launch Teams.
Who is Ultranauts?2024-04-01T08:50:00+00:00

Named a Fast Company World Changing Idea, Interbrand Breakthrough Brand and MIT Solve Challenge Winner, Ultranauts is reimagining how a company hires talent, manages teams and develops careers to empower our teams to perform at their best. For more information, visit https://ultranauts.co/

  • TeamX Launch: Decode team chemistry and identify teammates’ unique needs. 30 minutes of set-up with immediate insights tuned to your team’s needs so you can start working better together.
  • TeamX Launch: Decode team chemistry and identify teammates’ unique needs. 30 minutes of set-up with immediate insights tuned to your team’s needs so you can start working better together.
  • TeamX Launch: Decode team chemistry and identify teammates’ unique needs. 30 minutes of set-up with immediate insights tuned to your team’s needs so you can start working better together.

Training and Tools

As part of our mission to help other companies build inclusive, high performing teams, we have codified the learnings from almost a decade of experience and experimentation into a series of training workshops, courses and tools based on the practices that have emerged in our Universal Workplace. Learn more about our Training Workshops and courses 

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How Can We Help?

Ultranauts services can be engaged via retained quality engineering teams or for turnkey projects like auditing enterprise data quality or launching software test automation. Our onshore teams are uniquely equipped to onboard quickly, integrate seamlessly and help you deliver with confidence and on time.

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