Corporate Culture on the Spot: Creativity Seminar at Yandex

On December 4, 2018, 2^nd year students of the ISSEK master’s programme “Governance of STI” visited Yandex headquarters – that was the Seminar “Corporate Culture, encouraging creativity and innovation” within the course by Mikhail Gershman “Managing Creativity and Innovation”. The visit was organized with the help of Ekaterina Shor – a 2018-year graduate of the master’s programme and an employee at Yandex.

The seminar was opened with a short presentation by Ekaterina discussing company’s corporate culture. From a tiny firm with only several team members, whose key product was just a search engine, Yandex has grown up into a leading Russian high-tech company. Now it offers a whole ecosystem of services including Internet of Things and Voice Assistant.

Along with impressive financial performance, Yandex is famous for its unique corporate culture and attentive and careful attitude towards its employees. Yandex mission is to help people in meeting challenges and reaching goals of life. Its key values are freedom, openness, professionalism and atmosphere. For instance, Yandex managers are free to express their opinion on any issue, and for that purpose there is a system of internal blogs “Etushka”.  Yandex is a very open and friendly company, welcoming every guest; one can take pictures of everything except monitor screens of the employees.

To create a motivating atmosphere, employees at Yandex can organize their working places according to their own wishes and preferences, whilst the company covers all the expenses. There is a corporate doctor, gym, billiards, coffee-points, play rooms, event halls – everything for the employees to feel like at home or even better. As far as the main priority for Yandex is people, company pays high attention to recruitment procedures, new employee’s adaptation and internal relationships. For example, there is an ethics committee, which anyone can address facing a problem in interpersonal relationships. The communication system is of great importance – every week the Moscow office holds meetings called “hurals ” to discuss the most important news concerning the company and the industry. Employees from other cities join the hurals via video-calls or take part remotely.

Ekaterina Shor, 2018-year graduate of the Master's Programme

The report about the company inspired the students, who literally attacked Ekaterina with a number of questions about which job opportunities existed at Yandex, especially for foreigners, what countries Yandex had its offices in, who created its corporate culture and how much time per day employees spend in corporate recreation zones. Following Ekaterina, nobody in the company monitors in which rooms the employees spend their time. The company believes that switching to games and relax helps solving working problems. 

With all the questions answered, the students were to complete a group task – with the use of markers and flipcharts, as well as the knowledge about the company that they gained, they had to show one working day of a Yandex employee. The groups successfully coped with the task demonstrating all their creativity and knowledge acquisition skills.

 

Visiting Yandex sparked a great interest and left a lot of positive impressions and ideas:

---

Helena Wiehahn: It was a great opportunity to see such a forward-thinking corporate culture in action at Yandex. I think in future it would serve as a great reference point for me in my academic career to be able to reflect on what we have learned in class and the first-hand experience we were given. In South Africa, some companies are starting to adopt the more people-centered approach but most companies are still extremely corporate and tied up in bureaucracy. My impression of Yandex was that they were succeeding in making their organization as employee centered as possible and that it is a positive environment to be able to work in.	Maarouf Ali: It was really a great chance to see Yandex from inside and to discuss their corporate culture with them. The place is so friendly. I think, that helps the employees to overcome the difficulties and the work pressure with smiles as if they work at home!  Seeing in the reality, what we talked about in the class gives us an important experience in how we can implement this knowledge in our future work so, thank you very much.
Veselina Rashkova: The seminar at Yandex was indeed a very enriching and interesting experience. It correlated to the course "Managing creativity and innovation" very smoothly and our visit was a living proof that companies, which promote creativity and innovation, exist. We also had a glance at what the corporate culture of Yandex is and how people work. The fact that we heard the opinion of two employees about their workplace was also very authentic. It surely gave us an idea of what we would like for our future job to look like.	Tim Hooijmaaijer: I really liked the experience of going to the Yandex Headquarters. I expected a company with a modern office and an extraordinary work ethic mentality, but what I saw, was beyond these expectations. Everything we saw, was exceptional, especially in Russia. Further, I heard many fellow students saying it would be a dream to work there, what could be considered as a huge compliment to Yandex.
Leo Baudu   As a foreign student, it was a great pleasure to be able to visit Yandex, a true Russian company known for its strong corporate culture. I would like to thank again the staff of Yandex and our course director Mikhail for this very informative visit.