The MassTLC Tech Top 50 celebrates tech companies and leaders across the region who have made a significant impact in the community during the past 12 month. This year, we are excited to recognize winners across 8 categories: Best Pivot to Meet the New World, Business Accomplishment, Company Culture, Inclusivity Impact, Leadership, New Company of the Year, Tech for Good: Social Responsibility, and Tech to Watch.
Forty-nine honorees were chosen across these categories, with the final recognition, the Mosaic Award, given to Chevalier “Chevy” Cleaves, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer of MIT Lincoln Laboratory, for his work creating access and opportunity for future leaders. View the full list of winners, here.
Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing more about each of the recipients to spotlight their accomplishments and their impact on customers, partners, employees, and the broader community.
Today, meet PTC, one of this year’s honorees for Company Culture.
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Describe your company culture. What are your values and beliefs? How is it expressed by leaders and employees?
PTC has a truly people-first culture, which became even more evident over this last year as we put programs in place to support employees during COVID-19. In the early stages of COVID, as people at other companies struggled to balance work and family, PTC implemented a part-time work for full-time pay policy to help caregivers take care of loved ones and not stress about needing to always be online and available for coworkers. The sense of relief that flexibility and support offered employees cannot be overstated.
Weekly socials have always been an important part of the PTC culture. With the sudden inability to be together in person, PTC employees rallied, with support from leadership, to keep morale high and find new ways of staying connected, including virtual socials. For example, in India, they put on a talent show with so many entries, they had to break it up into two different sessions just to ensure proper time for all the incredible talent. Those watching the show in their homes raved about the experience getting to share some fun time with both their colleagues and families.
Meanwhile, as we start planning for returning to the office coming out of COVID, we are implementing a hybrid model for returning to the office. Based off our brand statement, “digital transforms physical,” we believe a way of working that supports both in person interaction and virtual environment is the way of the future and will continue to drive our culture.
What have you done that is different for your employees, customers, partners, and/or community that has improved/changed your culture?
PTC has a strong history of coming together to support those in need and is one of the core tenets of our culture. Our team rallied behind several other important causes this year, including fundraising for organizations supporting anti-COVID-19 efforts in India, raising money in support of our Austin colleagues during the cold storm that affected access to electricity, helping organizations fight against anti-Asian sentiment in the wake of violence against Asians and women, and creating employee volunteer opportunities to clean up our environment, plant trees,and promote green initiatives as part of our annual Earth Week celebration. We also have a PanMass Challenge team that rides in memory of PTCers who have lost their battle with cancer, and in honor of those still fighting. PTC employees come together and support each other each day, and even more so in times of need.
We also come together to support our customers; this year, PTC reached our goal of one million Onshape education users, a full nine-months ahead of schedule, due to the hard work of our Education Team. This means that more than one million students and educators have free access to a professional-grade, cloud-based CAD platform on any device, anywhere, anytime. The team came together and rallied behind an important cause, as COVID made teaching more difficult, but access to Onshape re-opened closed doors and allowed students to continue engaging in STEM education in a hands-on way.
As we thought about other ways we could best support our customers over the past year, we completely overhauled LiveWorx, our previously in-person event helping customers access game-changing content and expert guidance on digital transformation. This year’s event became a limited series with three live virtual events created to provide the same insight customers would normally get in person. This helped us realize that our customer experience center, the CXC, could help us connect with customers and employees near AND far, if we just rethought the space to also provided a digital, global experience. With a remodel currently under way, we’re looking forward to the completion when the space will help make our culture even more inclusive as we share our work globally through the virtual experience that is equal to the in-person experience.
Along with the amazing work our employees do to steward our culture, we implemented a few programs PTC-wide to continue to provide a solid cultural foundation:
- We created a purpose statement – “Power to Create” and helped employees understand their own unique power through enabling our leaders and managers to have in-depth conversations on the topics with their teams.
- We reworked and re-launched our values to ensure they embodied PTC and the way we work.
- We doubled down on our focus on DEI, including hiring our first Chief Diversity Officer and launching leadership programs for underrepresented minorities.
What does it mean to be recognized with the other Tech Top 50 honorees?
Massachusetts is home to so many impressive technology companies, so we’re thrilled to be named a Tech Top 50 honoree again this year.
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Learn more about Tech Top 50 and meet all the winners, here.
