The United Nations of Orbica

United Nations of Orbica. Photo / Supplied.

“If We Didn’t Love Maps So Much, We’d be a Translation Business”
Orbica’s Kurt Janssen on his team’s environment, culture and mix.

A quick look around Orbica's office in Christchurch's Innovation Precinct and you'll see an archetypical tech company: open spaces, adjustable height desks, sticky notes and scribbles on glass walls, and bean bags.

Take a second look and you'll see something a bit more unique: most of the world's continents and several of its major religions represented under one roof.

But conversely to the squabbling and posturing you'll find in a UN backroom, we've struck the jackpot in terms of culturally diverse team that has a blast working together bringing geography to the world. World peace through data, perhaps?

We call it the United Nations of Orbica, and I'm not really sure how it happened, to be honest. I just started employing people and the best candidates came from Pakistan, India, France, China or a myriad of places all over the globe. It seems like one minute there were just a couple of us getting pizza for lunch and suddenly we've got 18 and we're trying to find a restaurant that can cater for vegetarian, halal, kosher and gluten free. That's actually a more impressive feat than some of the tech problems we've cracked.

Tech in general in New Zealand is pretty cosmopolitan because we don't have the skill base or train enough folks here. That said, cultural diversity is one of the best things that's happened to us and it's great that it's happened from the beginning because it's established culture as a value. It's had a huge impact on our company identity and our ability to create unique solutions.

Diversity - more than "token"
Diversity is a bit of catchphrase thrown around the tech world, but it's much more than that for Orbica. It adds a richness to what we offer to clients. It brings together different ways of thinking about problems and how to solve them, and that's really the core of what Orbica does: we challenge ourselves all the time to solve the "too hard basket." It's almost become a "no-one else has solved it, chuck it over to Orbica and they can deal with it," kind of thing. It's diversity of thought that allows us to do that, as well as the ethos of the company, which is to use the best technology - whatever it is - on the bleeding edge. Two heads are better than one, and lots of heads from all around the world create some pretty exciting stuff.

Plus, everything we do applies globally, so being culturally diverse potentially opens access to other markets. If we ever decide to do something in India or China, we've got native speakers. And it may happen one day.

Culture as a value
Calling ourselves the United Nations of Orbica is a fun way to encapsulate who we are: our environment, our culture and our mix.

We've had a good play with it on the staff page of our website. You can pop online and search all our nationalities and languages (as well as our coffee preferences and super hero allegiance), and there are a lot. Not too many companies have staff fluent in French, German, Japanese, Hindi, Urdu, Pushto, Farsi, Gujarati, Tamil, Mandarin, Bahasa Indonesia, Hebrew and Spanish. If we didn't love maps so much, we'd be a translation business.

Multiculturalism adds a vibrancy to our office. We've cultivated a real respect for each other's cultures, which you don't always get in other organisations, and it's an opportunity to learn something new. I mean, if you ever want to know how many hours people from different countries around the world fast during Ramadan, there's a map for that thanks to our geospatial craftsman Faisal.

What we have in common bridges any differences: technology is a great leveller and a culture of its own.

For a company that's all about geography, it just seems right to be represented by people, cultures and religions from all around this orb we call the Earth. I'm super excited to see where our next Orbican will come from and what they'll bring to the mix.