Our four key products (Cybozu Office, Mailwise, Garoon and Kintone) are used daily by over 160,000 companies and non-profits worldwide. As we continue to expand our business globally, we’re looking for individuals from all walks of life, with unique and diverse life stories and lived experiences. We offer the flexibility you need to work your way within a supportive, motivated, teamwork-driven environment.
Focusing on our vision led to radical change.
To understand Cybozuʼs vision, you first have to understand a little bit of our history. In 2005, we were fighting to survive. Our stock lost half its value, and turnover reached an all-time high of 27%. Every week, we held another goodbye party. Morale was at its lowest.
We needed radical change. Our company goal was to “build a society brimming with teamwork,” but we hadnʼt even succeeded internally.
We decided that change needed to start from within. We spent years of trial-and-error trying to figure out what principles our company should adopt in order to build internal teamwork. Not everyone was on board, and many quit along the way.
After a while, our focus and efforts started to pay off. We settled on four, easy-to-understand teamwork principles that everyone within the company was able to get behind. We developed our products in line with those principles, to ensure that our vision permeated through every endeavour.
The results were staggering. Our stock recovered and then some. Our turnover has been below 5% for the last decade. We still have goodbye parties, but far more welcome parties.
The five elements guiding Cybozu’s teamwork are…
- Embrace a common vision. Embrace a common vision by making sure you and your team members are aiming for the same goals.
- Elevate individuality. Elevate individuality by understanding your own strengths and weaknesses, those of your teammates, and establishing the role each individual has to play in realizing the common vision.
- Express yourself with openness and transparency. Express yourself with openness and transparency by sharing information with your team and speaking your mind confidently. You don’t have to be flawless, but at least be open and honest.
- Exercise autonomy. Exercise autonomy by proactively seeking out the information you need, asking questions and giving your opinion when something doesn’t make sense, and applying that information to the realization of the common vision.
- Engage in dialogue and discussion. Engage in dialogue and discussion to continuously reinforce the other four elements by sparking important conversations and participating in constructive discussions with teammates.
Successful in Japan, growing globally
While we’ve had success overseas, it hasn’t been to the same extent as our success domestically. We’re looking to change this, and as part of this, we’ve created a new team that communicates primarily in English and is a mix of Japanese, international people already based in Japan, and those looking to relocate here. To help engineers be successful in our company irregardless of their Japanese abilities, we’ve created an in-house multilingual communication support team that provides interpretation and translation services and facilitates cross-cultural understanding.
Open and flexible work environment
We believe that to realize our vision of a society brimming with teamwork, we need diverse individuals to collaborate effectively in an open and flexible work environment. We provide each team member with the opportunity to be themselves and figure out the workstyle that best suits them, as long as they are transparent and take responsibility for their actions.
One of Japan’s top 3 best workplaces
We have won numerous awards for our commitment to creating an amazing work environment, including being repeatedly featured as one of Japan’s top 3 best workplaces according to workplace assessment firm Great Place to Work®. We also rank consistently among the best workplaces for women and young employees.
Frequent opportunities to improve yourself
Our team is brimming with people who like to learn. You’ll find that other members are frequently holding internal tech talks (more than 10 a week!). We value this incredibly, as many of our products have been born out of them. We support you going to external tech events and conferences too, considering them to be part of your work, and covering any costs for participation.
Dogfooding
As our products help businesses be more productive, it’s natural that we use them ourselves. This means you’ll get to see the products you’re working on from a user’s perspective, and be able to identify any bugs or pain points.
How Cybozu built an international engineering team
To learn more about how Cybozu approached building their English-speaking team from scratch, see this article.