Company Culture Is the Root of All Profits at Hostinger

Company culture is present in every company – no matter if it’s a startup or a corporation. It is something that is formed and maintained by employees and employers. Corporate culture may be profoundly practiced or forgotten, but it will still be there.

Today people are more focused on the purpose of their job rather than the compensation for it. They prefer great colleagues to a good boss, they shift from the usual 9-5 work hours to a flexible schedule, and instead of the usual office environment, they want to work wherever it is comfortable.

This means that the results are much more important than the means to achieve them. Therefore, great corporate culture plays a huge role in obtaining the desired profits. When the right corporate culture code is cultivated, employees feel cared for, valued, and motivated. They are happy to go to work and deliver more than 100% daily.

Read an updated blog about Hostinger’s culture and principles.

Why Is Company Culture Necessary?

In his book on the corporate culture of his first company Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, Tony Hsieh talks about how he failed to cultivate employee wellness and was so unhappy with the company that he had to sell it. When he later became CEO of Zappos, he swore he wouldn’t make the same mistake again. In the second half of his book, he shares what he did to nurture and develop the Zappos company culture. The company now has over 1,400 happy employees.

In short, corporate culture is necessary to achieve your company’s goals, increase profits, and develop your business. Happy employees usually equal happy customers, and the investment into great company culture is small compared to the future benefits. Increased productivity and decreased employee rotation are only a few perks of a company culture that works.

The corporate culture at Hostinger has always been a huge deal. It is something that creates a feeling of the company not only for the employees but also the customers. Happy and productive employees are usually what defines a good corporate culture. It is something that never stops changing or becomes static.

The Importance of Employee Engagement

Before drafting any official documents about our company culture, Arnas Stuopelis, CEO of Hostinger, started by setting a bold personal objective – “Inspire and encourage the team to achieve exceptional personal, professional, and business growth!” The key result of this objective was to have “99% of the colleagues saying that their work is challenging and they grow as professionals very fast.”

You can read more about what objectives and key results are in Arnas’ previous blog post. According to him, engaged employees are the root of all company profits.

On the inside, company culture is most visible when a Customer Success agent takes a laptop on a company trip to make sure that no tickets are left unanswered and the customers are receiving the best possible service. It is also apparent when the Head of Talent Acquisition schedules job interviews at 2 a.m. to have a chat with the most prospective applicants.

“I made a public commitment to the whole team that employee engagement and their feeling of purpose is the top priority for the CEO. I have been focusing on this goal for 3 months to achieve the results,” Arnas explained when asked about the challenges he faces as a CEO of an international company.

To achieve the desired key results, he started with a simple anonymous questionnaire. It allowed him to define the starting point. “In the anonymous survey I asked only 3 open questions:

1. Is your job challenging enough?
2. Tell us how your work contributes to the company goals.
3. Do you have any suggestions? Tell us anything. We want to hear you.”

Not only is it an excellent way to understand what possibly needs to change in the company or its culture, but it’s also a way to see whether or not your employees understand the purpose of the work they are doing.

As the survey was anonymous, everyone had the possibility to express how they truly feel about working at Hostinger. It also provided us with a chance to rethink some of our fundamental processes to improve the employee engagement rate.

“After evaluating the first portion of the feedback, I started to dig deeper. I had several one-on-one meetings with my colleagues and listened to their opinions and views on corporate culture. I read a lot about the best practices of employee engagement and how other progressive companies are cultivating their company culture code. These are the few which have inspired me the most:

• The Netflix Culture Deck
• Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead
• Jeff Bezos interviewed by Charlie Rose about Amazon’s philosophy and Amazon’s leadership principles
• Don’t create a sense of urgency, foster a sense of purpose”.

To become even better informed, Arnas communicated with people from other progressive companies about their corporate culture.  

“Especially interesting was my meeting and friendly discussion with an old fellow Daniel from Amazon. I met Daniel when I started my career in the web hosting industry. At that time Daniel was the salesperson who sold ICANN accreditation services to Hostinger back in 2012,” Arnas remembered the meeting and further elaborated on what Amazon’s company culture is.

“To sum up our long discussion in a Bangalore coffee shop, it was pretty clear to me that Amazon principles work as hard as their people do. It is not only a statement on their website. All the employees are using Amazon company culture every day, whether they’re discussing ideas for new projects or looking for the best solution to solve customers’ problems.”

After the meeting, Arnas realized that it was time to formalize and draft the Hostinger company culture book.

How We Drafted Our Corporate Culture Book

Together we drafted our company examples of values, discussed them in groups, and rated them individually. Everyone had to rate the values on a scale of 1 to 10 based on how important they found these values. It was essential for us to be in agreement with and have support from all our team members as every value had to be practically applicable, with every decision we make based on them.

Additionally, we used Tony Hsieh’s way of engaging the employees regarding the company culture and sent out an email to everyone asking them to describe the company culture at Hostinger in a few sentences. This is the email we sent:

Hi everyone,

We will be putting together a mini-book about Hostinger’s actual culture for all new hires. Our culture is the real behavior and skills which are valued in fellow employees, so we would like to include everyone’s thoughts in this book.

Please email me 100–500 words about what the Hostinger culture means to you. Here are some questions for inspiration: what is the Hostinger culture? What’s different about it compared to other company cultures? What do you like about our culture?

We will compile everyone’s contribution in the book. If you wish to remain anonymous, please indicate so in your response. We will be distributing the Corporate Culture book to all new hires as well as the existing team (and will probably publish it on our website too).

Also, please do not talk to anyone about what you will be writing or what anyone else wrote.

Remember, there are no wrong answers. We want to know what the Hostinger culture means to you specifically at this point in time, and we expect different responses from different people.

We already have some working material here to start with, but feel free to put it in your own perspective.

We value the things we make together. We’re going to set our values together. And we are going to achieve our goals as a team, too. This is our company. We succeed or fail together.

Cheers,

Arnas

The feedback we got from the team was remarkable and inspiring. It clearly showed that company culture derives from the employees. Here are just a few examples of what our employees think about Hostinger culture:

“At Hostinger you will always find someone who will listen to you. The opinions of each and every employee are highly valued, no matter if you work in Kaunas or at home, your opinion always matters.” – Gonzalo Ramirez

“What I like about working at Hostinger – the corporate BS is at a minimum. The flat structure lets you propose an idea. Discuss it with other skilled colleagues and come up with brilliant implementation. Later it is used by millions of people every day.” – Vaidas Lungis

“Hostinger gives you so much FREEdom that you can always contribute your best ideas, no hierarchy, and management bullsh*t, you can FREEly release your inner super-Saiyan to work productively showing our contributions to the company, and it never fails to reward.” – Ade Syah Lubis

The answers were put together, analyzed, and rounded up. This way, a clear idea of what Hostinger Company Values are was crystallized and put into words.

Hostinger Company Vision

At Hostinger our vision is to enable millions of people around the globe to unlock the power of the internet by giving them tools to learn, create, and grow online.

Hostinger Company Mission

“One of the most important things to me is that your contribution can impact millions of people worldwide.” – Skirmantas Juraska

Our mission is to make life easier for website developers and their customers. Our company idea supports this mission by offering stable, fast, and simple website hosting solutions at a price so low that nobody can beat it.

Here are Hostinger Company Values

The Customer Is Our Primary Focus

“Guiding, accompanying, providing solutions to someone who is lost, looking for the best answer to a website or a project problem – work that makes us stand out from those around us at a competitive level.” – Adriana Pino, Customer Success team

We begin by defining what our customer is and then draft the product or service around them. The most successful businesses have a customer-first mentality ingrained into their company culture.

Understanding your buyers’ behavior sets the path to success. Therefore, every employee on their first few days at the office spends some time as a Customer Success agent. This way everyone gets a real feel of who they are trying to benefit.  No matter which team you’re currently working with, you should always be asking yourself: ‘What did I do today to help our clients succeed online?’

We’re Hungry for Knowledge

“Personal growth is highly encouraged which is awesome and probably the best part of being a member of Hostinger family.“ – Justas Palaima, Email Marketing

We understand that nobody is perfect and the path to perfection is based on everyday learning. Hostinger fosters an open-minded corporate culture in the office. Everyone is allowed to make mistakes as it’s when we improve the most. Literature, apps, software, conferences, and everything else that is needed to increase productivity and improve our processes is available at hand. You just have to ask. If you’ve decided you already know everything and there’s nothing more for you to learn, Hostinger is not for you.

Hire and Develop the Best

“We have a team of real pros. It’s a privilege and a pleasure to work with them. Become a sponge and learn from the best!” – Arnas Kazlauskas

An outstanding workplace and remarkable work come from exceptional people. We invest as much money and time as it takes to find and hire the best out there. A huge part of our hiring process is making sure the person is perfect for the position they’re applying to and fits in with our company culture. It’s the biggest challenge yet.  Our current leaders train up-and-coming talent and they take this role very seriously.

High Performance

“We are not satisfied with good, we want to always be the best; we do not try, we do!” – Daugirdas Jankus, Head of Acquisition

We loathe comfort zones. Comfort means static in our office. At Hostinger we always try to push our limits and achieve more. It is important for our Company Culture to keep moving forward. To increase our productivity, we often move employees around the office, from team to team, working on different projects and constantly obtaining new skills. This way nobody gets too comfortable with where they are and everybody performs at the highest standard.

Freedom & Responsibility

“What I like the most about Hostinger is freedom and flexibility.” – Donatas Abraitis, System Engineer

Freedom to do what you like unleashes great potential and creativity. At Hostinger we don’t tell anyone to do anything. We hire people who are passionate about what they do and that enables them to move mountains. We are all self-starters. Nobody waits around for tasks to be handed out. Everyone is aware of what is best for the business and how they can contribute. We only provide guidance to our employees.

We Are Focused

“We realize that every single person has their own strong sides and the key to reaching full company potential is getting to know each employee personally and combining their strongest sides.” – Linas Levanas, Developer

It’s essential for us all to be on the same page. As long as our objectives and key results are clear, precise, and easy to understand, the company will be moving forward. Everyone here is brilliant in their own unique way and has qualities that nobody else has. Therefore, to get the best results, it is important to combine our strongest suits and stay focused. Hostinger’s corporate culture is about working united towards a clear goal. By taking the responsibility to do our best at all times, we identify and contribute to the next necessary step.

Speed Matters in Business

“We come up with hypotheses, present them to the team, listen to their feedback and then decide what to do. This way we’re always in action – AGILE!” – Giedrius Zakaitis, Head of Product

With the understanding that all our decisions are reversible, we are not scared to experiment. If you’re not fast, your competitors will be! Technology is something that constantly changes, and innovation is necessary. The faster you’re able to learn and adapt, the faster the company will grow. It’s better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all.

Earn Trust

“While compliments are appreciated, the critique is what turns you from good to great.” – Arnas Kazlauskas, Customer Success Academy

Everyone here is a pro. We value the knowledge in every one of us and understand the importance of feedback. Only with trust and constructive criticism can you move forward as a professional. Everyone’s opinion is important and is encouraged to be said out loud. We foster a “there are no stupid questions” environment, building up trust in the company.  

Dig Deep

“Every individual, from entry-level employees to executives, needs to work effectively as everyone’s performance impacts the whole team.” – Ade Syah Lubis, Hostinger Indonesia Director

We dive deep before any decision is made. Everyone at Hostinger is used to doing whatever is necessary to succeed, no matter the job description. We are an open-source company and all the data is available to everyone in order to make the right decision. Here, we base our decisions on facts and if they differ from reality, we dig even deeper.

Discuss, Agree/Disagree, Commit  

“Everyone has their own point of view. Sometimes it’s shared, sometimes it’s individual. The most important thing is to overcome the disagreements, reach a consensus, and proceed with the implementation.” – Kristina Dailydaite, Marketing Copywriter

Hostinger has over 200 employees worldwide. At times, it is hard to keep up with the changes at the company, but everyone is always welcome to express their opinion towards anything. We disagree in the manner of constructive criticism. We share different views and eventually commit to a decision. Once we do, everyone in the company is entirely committed to delivering their best towards one goal.

Deliver on the End Result

“We are thriving at work because we’re competent at what we do and feel like our colleagues are great at what they do. We value the things we are doing together and connect in the process. Our ambitions are growing exponentially and we’re autonomous to make sure we achieve them.” – Giedrius Zakaitis, Head of Product

The end result is just as important as the journey. Delivering on our personal and company goals with consistency means that our company culture is working and our company is successful. It drives us forward and allows us to be the best possible version of ourselves. A great company with a properly cultivated company culture will always empower its employees so that they effortlessly deliver 100% on the end result.

Each corporate culture is unique, with different examples of values and codes. The Hostinger Company Culture is how we get things done, it’s the vibe that everyone feels about Hostinger without having to know our full processes.

“Teams are totally independent and have their own OKRs. They are fast and efficient. No bureaucracy, unnecessary coordination or waiting on other departments to do their segment of the project – they are fully empowered to get it done themselves.” – Arnas Stuopelis, CEO