Title: Lead Engineer - API

Department: Group and Retirement Digital Platform

Joined TAL: February 2020

The team environment and commradery at TAL is one of the best I’ve experienced in my career. I really feel like we’re all there for each other and willing to go beyond expectations to help the team deliver great outcomes. This came to life for me when I had to go to India for two months, as my mother was unwell. The team really pitched in and ensured we could continue to do good work.

Of course, this kind of team bond doesn’t just happen by itself. The environment at TAL is so collaborative. We really share each other’s successes. When we’re communicating our results to the wider organisation, there’s a real effort to call out the people who’ve contributed and make sure everyone’s involvement is celebrated. This includes rewarding people—both permanent and contract team members – for example, with bonus gift cards or other appropriate rewards. It all helps make sure our people feel valued.

There’s also a lot of cross-team collaboration to ensure we’re delivering the best possible results, working together on our mission to improve the member experience. I’m always reaching out to other teams, whether that’s tech teams like cloud or cyber, or directly to business units. This helps me get feedback on the challenges and building solutions that have the bigger picture in mind.

To help drive this collaboration, I’m regularly initiating contact with people to build my connections. Sometimes, this happens in formal meetings, but often it’s as simple as making an effort to drop by someone’s desk and introduce myself. Or it’s having a chat at one of our social gatherings, whether that’s a team lunch, the Christmas party, a religious festival celebration like Divali or Eid, a platform-wide training session or a team-building session. Investing this time in building relationships helps people to understand my team and what we do, while also helping me to understand their point of view. It also helps me to find the right people I can call on for help, if I need it—whether that’s technical or business expertise.

I also love to connect with my team and collaborate in open-minded ways. For example, we’ll often book the table tennis or foosball tables in the George Street office and play while we brainstorm. I find this helps us to expand our thinking and get more ideas, which we’ll then go on and refine in more traditional meeting environments.

By coming together in this more casual environment, people feel free to share their ideas and it helps us to generate better solutions.

A strong team bond helps us come together when it matters to deliver – and makes work more rewarding for me.

Interested in applying?