This blog was co-authored with Michael Cucchi, Vice President of Product Marketing at PagerDuty.

Today, we begin a new week with the vision that, as a nation, we will execute a democratic election that sets the United States up for an even brighter future. It’s been wonderful to see so many pictures, videos, and stories online from all corners of the community showing people mailing in or turning in their ballots, or sharing their reasons for taking part in the election.

In particular, we’re proud to see how our PagerDuty employees have taken part in our Be #VoteReady campaign to educate themselves, engage in non-partisan Get Out the Vote activities, and take time out to cast their ballots. While this year has presented challenges in some regard for all of us, we recognize that the burden has fallen disproportionately on certain communities. The pandemic and racial violence over the summer have shown that we have a long way to go before we achieve equality and equity for everyone—and voting is certainly a key part of getting us there.

Civic Duty

At PagerDuty, we advocate for and support voter engagement because we know that fundamental change is required to change the systems that uphold and permeate systemic racism. In June, we made rapid response grants to Black Lives Matter and the NAACP and committed $500,000 to combat systemic discrimination through new investments to build Just & Equitable Communities. Our goal is to help advance equity by partnering closely with people with lived experiences who are experts on the issues affecting them. We expect this will broaden our focus from voter engagement to new areas that may include justice reform, health disparities, or investments in emerging leaders of color.

To support all U.S. Dutonians to exercise their democratic right in this year’s election, we:

• Are providing time off to vote through our annual Volunteer Time Off
• Are instituting a No-Meetings Day on Election Day
• Have created a Civics 2020 Toolkit and safety guidelines
• Have provided internal workshops, such as “Let’s Talk Politics: How to have Impassioned Conversations” and “Coping with Uncertainty”

We also created special manager resources and increased the frequency of our leadership team interactions with all employees. Additionally, we encouraged our employees to serve as poll workers and made it easy for customers to register to vote through TurboVote, a tool from PagerDuty customer Democracy Works.

Customer Support in the Moments That Matter

Beyond civil rights, 2020 has also posed significant business and economic challenges. The global pandemic saw the whole world pivot—moving 100% online to live, learn, work, and connect.

This meant that companies had to suddenly create new ways to support employees working remotely and spin up new digital services to meet new customer expectations. This rapid adaptation has been stressful, but throughout the year we’ve seen many organizations—from crisis hotlines to telemedicine and financial trading firms—flex to meet increased and changing customer needs, in order to exit 2020 in an even stronger position.

As a platform built for constant change and mission-critical, real-time work, PagerDuty continues to adapt and support customers when they need it most. Our platform is built for this new era of constant change and time-critical work, especially during times of crisis or unexpected events.

We recently launched our new Crisis Event Management capabilities and best practices, (link to webpage) designed to help our customers ensure business continuity and a clear crisis management process, no matter what the issue. PagerDuty does this by:

• Allowing crisis management teams to respond quickly. On-duty crisis managers are alerted instantly and have access to the resources they need to understand the issue, begin effective analysis, and bring others in as necessary.
• Mitigating disruption. The entire organization is provided access to one source of truth to allow for accurate, rapid information dissemination, which minimizes disruption to the delivery of business services, prevents disruption to customers, and makes sure employees get consistent updates.
• Giving you the ability to manage issues no matter where you are. Teams are now distributed, working in multiple offices and homes and in a variety of tools. But in the moments that matter, they still need to orchestrate a response instantly and with context, which is why we’ve driven innovative controls and insights right into real-time communication tools like Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams.

PagerDuty for the People

Whether it’s proactive investments in voter engagement as a means to combat systemic discrimination, supporting our employees to vote or take part in the election, or helping our customers make one of the largest economic transitions in the last decade, PagerDuty has always been for the people, in the moments that matter.

This week is a critical moment in United States history and we thank everyone who exercised (or is planning to exercise) their right to vote. Beyond agility and resilience, these times also require empathy and the willingness to listen, and taking that rare moment to recognize that there is more that unites us than divides. No matter what happens, PagerDuty will remain always on for our customers, employees, and community partners.