Our Culture: Firm, Flexible & Fun!
We are one of the most flexible companies you will work for but we do have rules. One of them is that fun should be a part of our work and our products!
Location & Amenities: Our location is close to downtown Victoria on beautiful Vancouver Island.
Social Activities: Yes, we have "sociables."
A Day in The Life: What’s it really like to work here? Here’s what you’ll tell your friends.
While we expect the highest standards of conduct, we are a relaxed, people-oriented business.
Our policies necessarily reflect the needs and expectations of our customers – all senior professional educators, administrators or business managers – while offering a package that is flexible and considerate of the needs of our individual employees. Given the nature of our business, many members of our staff and management are education professionals.
Details regarding vacations and other leave, hours of work, etc., are contained in our employment policies, distributed to each new employee
Our company is project driven and organized around project management processes. All projects at Etraffic will assign a Project Coordinator. Our corporate Project Management Methodology guides our Project Coordinators and our departmental methodologies guide the work of other teams. As members of dynamic teams, Project Coordinators work closely with Etraffic’s production departments, including graphic design, content, and others.
Working at Etraffic Solutions presents you with a challenging, dynamic environment where both complexity and the rate of change are high. As a company, we are seldom in our comfort zone for long. That’s just not our way.
We maintain mature products requiring reliable software, hardware and network infrastructures across international boundaries while constantly managing a portfolio of new projects in various stages of production.
Etraffic Solutions is first and foremost a business venture in a competitive, high-tech industry. The education marketplace in the new millennium demands speed, agility and adaptability while still insisting and maintaining traditional high standards of quality. A positive, “can-do” attitude in the face of these multiple challenges is essential to our success.
Etraffic provides recognition and acknowledgement on an individual basis and in an appropriate manner. We encourage a positive, proactive and personal culture.
Employees receive feedback from co-workers, project stakeholders and managers on an ongoing basis, from a simple thank you to formal award presentations.
Growth is both encouraged and facilitated at Etraffic. The company encourages employees to accept new technologies, standards or responsibilities. We facilitate this through our professional learning program. Etraffic also promotes an environment that will provide whatever equipment or materials you need to do the work in a way that meets our high standards for quality.
Performance will lead to advancement at Etraffic. We base promotions on a combination of personal qualities, experience, expertise, and a demonstrated attitude of leadership and responsibility. Salary increases are not automatic with each promotion. Our company awards these increases only when an individual demonstrates they are fulfilling the requirements of the new position.
Etraffic Solutions is located in the Redbrick Building at 710 Redbrick St., across the street from Mayfair Shopping Centre in Victoria, British Columbia. Our company occupies and owns the entire first floor of this building. In addition to the shopping centre, the area includes a Lifestyle Market (organic food and deli), a Canadian Tire store, Office Depot, Starbucks, Odyssey Fitness gym and a very large outdoor park with tennis courts all within two blocks. The Gorge Fitness Centre and access to the Galloping Goose Trail is just one block further on the Selkirk Waterfront.
The Etraffic office space includes a large kitchen and lunchroom with an outdoor patio area. As part of our effort to be a green company, we provide a secure bike lockup and shower facilities.
Etraffic employees include software developers, multimedia designers, subject matter experts, business representatives, data processing teams, and project management teams. Although each group is in its own area, because of our project-based management practices and organizational structure, it is necessary for all of us to work as a seamless team.
Etraffic is a busy, communications rich environment. Think of an advertising agency, software company, television channel, and publishing company all rolled into one. We always have upcoming deadlines for our projects and new production requests that need to be coordinated. Excellent and timely communications is critical. Stand up meetings, meetings at workstations, boardroom meetings, Messenger, email and file transfers are all a part of the mix.
Our office layout and corporate systems help facilitate the needs of our culture and our employees as much as possible.
Etraffic likes to foster social activities inside and outside of the office. We not only love what we do but we know there is more to a job than just work.
Celebration lunches are routine, both in and out of the office, in regards to significant project milestones. Each month we have a brief celebration to honor those with birthdays or other personal successes in that month.
We also maintain a list of ideas for social activities contributed by employees. There are currently about forty items on that list. Our goal each month is to make two of those ideas a reality. Etraffic, of course, contributes significantly towards both the time and costs of these activities.
Here are a few social activities from our 2007 list!
5:30am Some Business Development employees arrive as we have customers on the east coast, three hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time.
Between 5:30 and 9:00, the rest of the staff arrives. Some folks come in at seven, others at eight or eight thirty, some after they drop the kids off at school. If employees have a good reason, we are flexible on the time.
After good mornings all around to your fellow coworkers, you settle into your workstation wearing casual clothes and pop your headphones on, boot up Messenger and check your email. Ah, your Google Calendar, up on your second monitor, tells you that you have a meeting at 11am today. Ok, time to settle in to work.
How it goes from here depends on which of the many specialist groups we have here at Etraffic; software developers, multimedia designers, subject matter experts, systems administrators, business representatives and data processing and project management teams.
As the morning starts, the busy-ness and chatter ramps up. There is soon constant motion and conversation as people go from one workstation to another to talk in person. If you don’t have at least one meeting a day, that would be unusual. More senior staff often has several meetings every day.
You take your first break when it fits your schedule. Maybe you whip something up in our large kitchen and then take a break on the patio. Your laptop will work out there if you need to check your messages. Or maybe it’s just a trip to the microwave and a bite of breakfast at your desk while you catch up on some personal messages and tasks.
For your lunch break you might head across the street to the mall, pop over to Lifestyle Market or go for a walk down to the Selkirk waterfront. Or maybe you dive into your Second Life or Warcraft avatar for a few minutes.
Meanwhile the pace picks up. Most days at Etraffic are very busy, and include no small amount of change. The positive and flexible environment goes with a dynamic and charged workplace. We don’t just maintain our levels of productivity and revenue; we are constantly pushing those limits, constantly growing. If you want to grow as a person, a professional, or as a company, you must be out of your comfort zone fairly regularly. We are. Embracing innovative new ways of doing things and stepping up to new challenges and levels of performance, are standard practice at Etraffic.
We have a high trust culture, and though we provide you with the direction, information and support you need, we give you a great deal of freedom regarding how you accomplish your goals. The flexibility we offer in terms of how you get your job done comes with responsibility. We expect every employee at Etraffic to show initiative and leadership.
By around 1pm employees start to head home, mostly those who need to pick their kids up from school. If they have not put in eight hours they will finish that up at home. If you have needed to take some time off for personal reasons during the day or the week, you’ll do the same, making up the time before the end of the month. If you had to put in extra time to meet a deadline, you can take the earned time off at any time in the future. If you came in at 8:30, as most of our employees do, you’ll pack up and head out at five. Work is good. Life is good.