Red Gate Analysis

Introduction

Red Gate is a software company giving "brilliantly basic" apparatuses for innovation experts around the world. Established by Neil Davidson and Simon Galbraith in 1999, it has yearly included in the Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For, since 2007 and additionally various different grants. The organization now utilizes 250 individuals in Cambridge and Pasadena, USA.

In spite of the fact that it is developing, Red Gate tries to keep up its unique start-up, casual society by utilizing an assortment of instruments and activities to energize worker drove advancement and reinforce its connected with society. Neil and Simon depict their establishing rationality, "When we established the organization, we began with the accompanying objectives:

Introduction

Red Gate is a specialist software development company based in Cambridge that was  founded in 1999. Red Gate, which has a unique philosophy, sets out to create ‘ingeniously simple tools’ that solve day to day technical problems. Red Gate is an interesting organization which is separated to different organizations through its powerful working environment society and its mentality to representative inspiration.

This report will analyze the organizational culture at Red Gate and how it challenges employees to develop both professionally and personally. In addition, the report will discuss the motivation of the company’s employees and how the generous benefits package contributes to achieving high staff morale and healthy relationships. The company has featured annually in the Sunday Times Best 100 companies to work for, since 2008.

Since the birth of the company, the founders had adopted a philosophy which would play a huge part in the company’s overall success. The founders of company believed in building a company culture that represented their moral values and who they are as people. (Neil Davidson & Simon Galbraith, 2013)

In the words of its founder, “We make products that solve complex problems. Our tools are technically challenging to create but really intuitive to use – a philosophy we call” ingeniously simple”. (Neil Davidson & Simon Galbraith, 2013)

A clear understanding of how the business has become so successful through an effective organization culture and he high level of employee motivation, can be obtained by exploring, in detail, these areas in relation to the company.

Organizational culture model is an abstract concept and therefore difficult to understand. But why do people behave differently in different organizations? In 1980 the American professor xEdgar Schein developed a organizational culture model to make culture more visible within an organization. Edgar Schein also indicated what steps need to be followed to bring about cultural change.

According to Edgar Schein there are direct and indirect mechanisms within organizations. The organizational culture model is directly influenced by direct mechanisms. This includes exemplary behaviour, opinions, status and appointments. Indirect mechanisms do not influence the organizational culture directly however they are determinative. This includes the mission of a company, formal guidelines, corporate identity, rituals and design.

Analysis

2.1 Culture

Organizational culture can be defined as “the beliefs and behaviors that determine how a company’s management interact and handle outside business transactions” from top manager in internal. Culture develops organically over time from the trait of the employees that the organization employs. Culture is often reflected in its dress code, business hours, office setup, employee benefits and many other aspects of operation.

Since the birth of the company at Red Gate can be analyzed by applying a number of theories, one of which is Schein’s three levels of culture model.

The first level of Schein’s theory is related to factors within the organization that can be observed and measured. According to Buchanan and Huczynski, ‘it refers to the visible things a culture produces. It includes both physical objects and behavior patterns’. (Andrzej Hucynski, David Buchachan, 2013, p.114)  ( Give example) This could relate to the relaxed working environment which has been created at Red Gate, including the fact that there is no dress code and working hours are very flexible.

For supporting ideas, people at Red Gate will tell you that Redgate offer a genuinely different working environment from most companies. Red Gate is relaxed, informal and fun yet will challenge their employees to do great work. People who work in Redgate have flexible working hours, no dress code and on-site perks which simply make life easier (and a 3D printer, just for fun). Their company’s values based culture helps us do the right thing for our customers and colleagues. The employees in Redgate always welcome open discussions and free flowing ideas and champion learning and continuous improvement.

Moving on, the second level of Schein’s model relates to the values of the organization in question. Values relate to the beliefs of the organization and how they believe work should be completed and how to manage situations. Means it cannot be seen but still can be feeling. This could relate to the goal setting minded in all of the employees which has been created at Red Gate, that is every one puts in efforts and strategies to achieve the same goal to the improvement of the company.

For example In November 2009, according to the Coding by the Sea, Neil challenged staff to generates new ideas for commercial products, fixing problems with internal systems and processes, learning new technologies, learning new skills by working with different people, allowing people to scratch itches without any expectation by the company of producing a commercially viable product, allowing people to do something for any other reason they like. The goal was to spend a week developing a product that could quickly be shipped to customers. A converted barn on the Suffolk coast was home for the week, while the team developed a new product away from the distractions of the office. The result was SQL Search, a plug-in for SQL Server Management Studio and was available just three months after initial development. Four months after over 10,000 downloads of the product were achieved.