As millions of workers leave their employers during the era of the “Great Resignation,” there’s one otherwise unquantifiable sense of enlightenment that has become more and more measurable over the past few months: perspective.
Feelings of burnout and exhaustion — perhaps caused by homes doubling as workplaces for the past year and a half, the increased demands on overburdened staffs or the lack of career growth and training opportunities — have led workers to reconsider what’s worth working for.
Now more than ever, workers want flexible working hours that don’t keep them at the same desk for more than eight hours a day. They want unlimited PTO that doesn’t feel like it has restrictions. They want companies that are going to help them in their career growth.
Companies, in an effort to retain their current employees and attract new ones, are taking notice.
“With everyone’s lifestyle and work style shifting over the past year, we wanted to make sure that as an organization we are reinventing ourselves with these changing times,” said Pulse Analytics Director of Engineering Felix Wong. For Pulse, an NYC-based business intelligence company, that includes WFH benefits, an early start to the weekend through company happy hours and flexible working hours.
Pulse isn’t alone in its efforts. Leaders from Box, Catalyst, TheGuarantors and Radar shared with Built In NYC how they attract new talent, kept existing employees and adapted their working environment to meet workers where they are.
What are some things you and your team do to attract great talent and stand out from other potential employers?
I have a focus on excellence and want to hire top performers to be on a team of top performers. I want to push my team to achieve the best they can in every category. By holding ourselves to a higher standard, we create a winning culture that’s attractive. There are too many organizations that accept mediocrity. There’s a level of “this is good enough,” but I want to push my team to achieve excellence, which you can notice if you’re approaching the team externally. If you talk to anyone on the team, there’s a focus on doing the work right, but it’s also tied to achieving their personal goals.
It’s all about attitude, and during the pandemic, we know we need to push through and focus on what we can control. By focusing on what we could control, we were able to push through the pandemic and have our best year ever. We supported so many accounts that we knew should be doing well and on accounts where we saw an opportunity to offer solutions to improve the new model of working in a hybrid environment. When we don’t worry about the things out of our control and focus on what we can, we not only attract but foster great talent at Box.
We were designed from the beginning as a cloud-first company with the ability to work from anywhere.”
Once someone has joined your team, how do you keep them on board?
I like to manage people on an individual basis — so we have overarching goals — but every single person has individual motivation. I try to work with everyone on an individual basis to see what they are looking to get out of the role and what they’d like to get out of it in the next three to five years. I like to look at the big picture by asking the questions, “Are you interested in continuing as an individual contributor, getting into a manager role, or looking to do sales and then launch into another career like being an author?” I really focus on what motivates them and work backward from there. Some people want coaching, some want to be checked in on once in a while, or some want someone to sell alongside them. There’s a lot of ways people like to work and it’s all about being flexible as a manager. We are held to goals, but there’s a lot of personal micro-motivations that can be tied into and use to be a high-functioning team.
The pandemic has led many professionals to reconsider what they want from a job, and where and how they want to work. How has your company adapted to the shifting wants and needs of your employees over the last year? And what steps have you taken to create a workplace that meets those needs?
We were designed from the beginning as a cloud-first company with the ability to work from anywhere. Box’s original mission was to empower people to work from anywhere, which is our foundation. We’ve added a ton from a product perspective as we go to market with the content cloud, but down to our core, we can work from anywhere. With the new way of work, we’ve probably become more efficient at selling and more efficient at our jobs. We’ll support the working style that people will be most effective with and allow them to work in that way, whether it’s hybrid or if they prefer in-office. We believe however we can best serve our clients, we’ll deliver that. When people interview with us, they can see that if they want to work remotely or come into an office once that’s an option, they can do that.
What are some things you and your team do to attract great talent and stand out from other potential employers?
We truly value our time at work and not at work. It isn’t just about giving unlimited PTO to people — everyone does that. It’s about carving out time as a company to take a break together. It’s about not receiving Slack messages when you are off. It’s about having team-building and bonding events that occur during working hours to not steal time from your personal life. We genuinely care about everyone’s ability to be their best self here and at home — wherever home is.
Truly embracing a work-life balance is what we take pride in.”
Once someone has joined your team, how do you keep them on board?
We have an extensive onboarding process that is curated for each employee prior to them joining the organization. We set up all of their meetings, one-on-ones and onboarding sessions so that all they have to do is just show up. This provides for an ample amount of time to be a “sponge” and truly get to ask questions and get to know the team. As an employee, people have the ability to grow within their role and/or grow into other parts of the company. We have had people transition from sales to CS, from ICs to first-time managers, and from CS to product. There are no limitations to your ability to learn on the job and extend yourself into new areas of your career at Catalyst.
The pandemic has led many professionals to reconsider what they want from a job, and where and how they want to work. How has your company adapted to the shifting wants and needs of your employees over the last year? And what steps have you taken to create a workplace that meets those needs?
Truly embracing a work-life balance is what we take pride in. We are regularly vulnerable with each other and make sure to carve out space to care for ourselves and our families. We have shifted to an entirely hybrid model. People have the ability to work from their homes remotely or anywhere in the U.S. and Canada. Working from home is not everyone’s cup of tea, so we have also safely opened our office for people to work there when they need to.
What are some things you and your team do to attract great talent and stand out from other potential employers?
At TheGuarantors, our people team is a combination of HR, talent and all organizations within the company. We make it a collaborative effort to attract great talent. We make sure that we hire people who are complementary to our existing teams and skillsets. We also leverage our talent network and develop a talent pipeline. The feedback from candidates and those who eventually joined our team said that it was not just the compensation package that attracted them, but it was an overall career and learning opportunities, upside in our market niche and positive work environment.
Our team consists of passionate employees who love what they do, and many have worked in multiple successful startups. We showcase our diversity in all aspects. Collectively, our employees speak multiple languages and some speak more than three. Our leadership team puts our people first. In 2020, our company was affected by the Covid-19 economy. We made the safety of our employees a priority. We successfully transitioned to a remote work environment. In addition to these factors, the average tenure of our leadership team is four years, with an exception of two — including myself — who joined in April 2021.
Once someone has joined your team, how do you keep them on board?
When a new employee joins TheGuarantors team, we have a “special sauce.” Our leadership team is involved and engaged with our employees. We are consistently working on employee engagement, communication and how we can improve. We are not perfect and understand that every employee has different needs such as career growth, mentorship and learning new technologies. We invest in our employees and promote from within the company. We value the experience that each employee learns in their role, especially about our industry. We encourage and train all our employees to learn about other responsibilities in other organizations. We leverage our employees’ diverse backgrounds and experiences.
Our culture is simple: we acknowledge our wins and recognize and respect our employees. Our leaders and managers communicate and check in with employees regularly. We encourage our employees to bring new ideas, speak their minds and provide feedback. As we think of new ways to embrace our remote workforce, our startup environment offers employees the ability to grow whether it is leadership, technology or other areas. Every employee has the flexibility to work remotely.
Our culture is simple: we acknowledge our wins and recognize and respect our employees.”
The pandemic has led many professionals to reconsider what they want from a job, and where and how they want to work. How has your company adapted to the shifting wants and needs of your employees over the last year? And what steps have you taken to create a workplace that meets those needs?
We transitioned to a remote work environment where 99 percent of our employees work remotely. The 1 percent are the ones that go into our headquarters at 7 World Trade Center throughout the week. The needs of our employees and candidates have changed since the start of the pandemic. We value and ensure that our employees’ health and safety take top priority. We moved towards a Zoom working environment as well as using collaborative technology and tools. Our employees are happier.
What are some things you and your team do to attract great talent and stand out from other potential employers?
We believe that every employee’s journey with the company is unique, and we try our best to carefully design the employee experience to ensure that each person joining our company will come away with a unique and exceptional experience. We also have ongoing blogs to show what a “day in the life” is like here at Pulse.
We also are a celebratory bunch and make an excuse to celebrate pretty much anything. We often host quarterly team dinners, anniversaries, birthday lunches, whiskey nights for a new software release and even the occasional fika (Swedish coffee breaks)!
Finally, employees may leave for a myriad of reasons but it’s important for us as a company to ensure we take the effort to find out why they’re leaving and make sure we take the opportunity to improve and develop the employee experience for current and future employees. We also want to make sure that even if they leave, they’ve come out with a lifetime experience filled with great memories!
Pulse has adapted by listening to our employees’ needs.”
Once someone has joined your team, how do you keep them on board?
In their first week, every employee goes through a series of onboarding sessions ranging from engineering operations to data architecture overview. They’re also given the opportunity to participate in our mentorship program which provides them a way to gain hands-on guidance and advice on professional development.
Once the employee gets acclimated to the new environment, it’s all about helping them develop their skillset and ensure they have the necessary support to achieve their professional goals. We provide employees with an educational stipend to spend on conferences, workshops and other educational materials and also host lunch and learns where each employee can learn from a variety of topics ranging from healthcare economics to web accessibility. And because part of helping our employees succeed is to help them develop meaningful relationships with their coworkers, we’ve also established a “Donut Buddies” program where each employee gets paired with a fellow colleague and gets the opportunity to learn about their co-workers at a more personal level.
The pandemic has led many professionals to reconsider what they want from a job, and where and how they want to work. How has your company adapted to the shifting wants and needs of your employees over the last year? And what steps have you taken to create a workplace that meets those needs?
Pulse has adapted by listening to our employees’ needs. With everyone’s lifestyle and work style shifting over the past year, we wanted to make sure as an organization we are reinventing ourselves with these changing times. We have continued our company happy hours — though they might be virtual — but it’s a great opportunity for the employees to relax, unplug from work and get a well-deserved jump start on the weekend.
We also offer benefits to reflect working from home and some added expenses that have been put on our employees’ plates. We believe in providing flexible hours — life happens!
Regarding business, we have made sure those open lines of communication are there through various channels and we encourage cross-team functions and discussions as we would in the office daily. Everyone’s opinion has value here at Pulse and whether we’re in person or virtual, we want to give individuals a platform to share their thoughts and ideas!
What are some things you and your team do to attract great talent and stand out from other potential employers?
At Radar, our goal is to recruit and retain a high-performing and diverse team that enables us to build the industry-leading location platform. We’re opinionated about how we hire to set ourselves apart from other companies and provide a memorable experience to candidates.
First, we’ve established a strong employer brand that attracts prospective hires. In 2020, Radar ranked among Crain’s Best Places to Work in NYC and was recognized as one of the city’s best employers for creating a fulfilling place to work, especially during a pandemic.
Second, we’ve created a thoughtful hiring process which makes for an impressive candidate experience. We write inclusive and clear job descriptions, conduct culture add (vs. culture fit) interview and avoid unconscious bias. We cover travel and hotel expenses for out-of-state candidates who want to interview in-person, ensure candidates have the opportunity to speak to our founders and understand our mission and long-term vision, and provide thorough interview agendas that outline expectations and set candidates up for success.
Finally, we invest a significant amount of time sourcing talented and diverse candidates. We believe outbound sourcing is one of the best ways to diversify our candidate pool. We offer a competitive referral bonus that rewards employees for referring high quality candidates. Additionally, we leverage sourcing platforms like Jopwell, Linkedin and Angelist to source qualified and diverse candidates.
Once someone has joined your team, how do you keep them on board?
At Radar, we strive to create a rewarding work environment where our employees feel empowered to do their best work. To keep our team motivated and refreshed, we offer unlimited PTO and flexible work hours. We’re a passionate team that works hard so it’s important that our employees have a healthy work-life balance.
Additionally, we offer an enticing benefits package. Our compensation packages include competitive salary, stock options and a 401(k) plan with a 4 percent match. Our health benefits package includes health, dental and vision insurance with 100 percent coverage for employees and 12 weeks of paid parental leave. We also offer unique perks like free Citi Bike memberships and discounted gym memberships for fitness facilities in NYC!
Working at Radar is also a tremendous opportunity for career growth. We’ve developed a career ladder and invested in talent development to provide clear growth opportunities. And our business and team are growing quickly which creates ample opportunities for employees to take on more responsibilities and graduate from IC to management roles.
Enjoying the ride is one of our company values. To honor this value, we do plenty of team activities to bond, celebrate wins together and have fun! We host monthly happy hours on our office rooftop, department and company-wide offsites, as well as quarterly kickoff events and holiday celebrations. For this year’s end-of-summer event, we took the whole team to the U.S. Open Tennis Championships!
Enjoying the ride is one of our company values. To honor this value, we do plenty of team activities to bond, celebrate wins together and have fun!”
The pandemic has led many professionals to reconsider what they want from a job, and where and how they want to work. How has your company adapted to the shifting wants and needs of your employees over the last year? And what steps have you taken to create a workplace that meets those needs?
As a result of the pandemic, we’ve doubled down even more to make sure our employees feel valued, connected and productive. While the office was closed, we shipped and reimbursed employees for any equipment needed to be productive while remote. Our Brooklyn HQ in DUMBO is open again, but we are still remote-friendly and ship or reimburse employees for any equipment they need.
Additionally, we’ve launched:
- Summer Fridays to encourage work-life balance
- No Meeting Fridays to alleviate Zoom fatigue and allow for uninterrupted stretches of deep work
- Optional monthly in-person team events for those who can and want to get together
- Slack groups on topics ranging from food to DEI to music so employees can bond over shared interests
- Randomly-paired Zoom hangouts so employees from different teams get a chance to connect and learn more about each other
