The BragWorthy Culture Podcast is hosted by Jordan Peace, CEO of Fringe (www.fringe.us). Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify & Apple Podcasts
(2)
Hosted by Jordan Peace, CEO of Fringe, the podcast celebrates companies that have a bragworthy culture and shares stories of that culture was built with the goal of inspiring others to create a workplace that’s more satisfying, rewarding and purposeful. The podcast celebrates companies that have a brag-worthy culture and shares stories of how that culture was built and how it is developing today.
Listeners can take away practical and philosophical advice and learn how to apply it to their own companies. Guests will include CPOs, HR managers, employee experience professionals and experts, CEOs and other executives that enjoy a brag-worthy culture, along with employees of a workplace with an outstanding culture. By celebrating top cultures and sharing insights, people can help build a workplace that’s more satisfying, rewarding and purposeful.
Just because you’re an American company doesn’t mean you have to do everything “the American way.”
In this video clip, Rick Hammell of Atlas talks about his approach to working with clients in over 160 countries, speaking 98 different languages: he has to ensure that his team members are supported in their own language and cultural idiom (and time zone!) so that they, in turn, can support clients in the same way.
The more ideas and options there are, the more opportunities exist to find the ones that can have the most impact on an organization.
Rick Hammell, CEO at Atlas, wants to make sure that team members feel they can share their ideas, and do so with passion. That’s going to ensure more engagement in discussions, and ultimately, better decisions from those discussions.
While some are worried about a looming recession, Michael Katz, CEO and Co-Founder at mParticle, isn’t.
Michael believes there’s been a lot of hype and froth in the markets. There are companies out there that are not building fundamentally sound businesses. These “pretenders,” as he calls them, will be revealed in an economic downturn, which will be better for end users and the capital markets.
Many companies went fully remote during the pandemic but have been experimenting with many variants since restrictions have been lifted.
In this video clip, Michael Katz of mParticle notes that with an economic downturn looming, resources need to be invested in what matters most. He’s observed hiring and retention in the last few years and sees that fully remote is still working. Therefore, it will be their model of work for the foreseeable future.
Digital transformation is about delivering necessary people, necessary practices and cultural changes in a post-pandemic world.
Eveline Jaynes, Director of Talent Acquisition and Management at Laserfiche, knows that this requires a new entrepreneurially-minded generation of talent that can harness technology and drive innovation to effect this transformation.
Even though Laserfiche has been operating in a fully remote capacity for some time, it recently broke ground on a new corporate headquarters.
In this video clip, Eveline Jaynes of Laserfiche talks about the workspace Laserfiche hopes to create at this new headquarters, a place that is collaborative but also autonomous and independent. She hopes that this will help team members transition from being remote to optionally coming into the office three days a week.
It’s no longer a surprise to see values printed on the walls of a company. But what is surprising is if team members can recite them without reading them from those walls.
Inna Kuznetsova, CEO at ToolsGroup, has seen this more than once in organizations she has visited, which is why she believes that it’s far more important — and more memorable — for companies and team members to live their values than to publicize them.
A mentor to Inna Kuznetsova of ToolsGroup encouraged her to look at how women were distributed throughout a company and to note that whenever there was a major drop-off, there was an opportunity.
In this video clip, Inna shared how she used that experience to promote women into areas where they are less represented in order to help create a pipeline of experience for the future.
“Mental health” means different things to different people. What matters is making it a priority.
Jessica Marucci, VP of People and Places at Catalyst Software, has observed that some of her team regard self-care and total rest as part of their mental health routine, while others simply continue to work but add in some relaxing routines for themselves. As long as team members don’t ignore the importance of mental health, everyone can thrive.
Whether a company has sayings written on walls or mugs or whether they simply have a catchphrase around the office, there’s always a certain way of doing things. This is the company culture.
David Yovanno, CEO and Board Director at impact.com, believes that one of the best ways to uncover the true nature of culture at a company is by asking questions. Particularly when team members are asked about their experiences of best bosses or best companies. Their answers will point towards what matters in both leadership and organizations.
When you feel you are doing your best, you can sometimes get complacent.
Rick Hammell, CEO at Atlas, believes that we often need others to challenge us, to make us believe that we can do better than we are doing. Sometimes that greatness can only be coaxed out of us if we believe we can exceed our current “best” to achieve a new level.
Company values are not set in stone, they can change.
Michael Katz, CEO and Co-Founder at mParticle, isn’t attached to what he calls his company’s “current set of values.” He doesn’t believe there’s any glory in holding on to values that never change if that means that your company suffers financially as a result.
As part of evaluating lifestyle choices during and after the pandemic, some employees have been keen to give back to their communities in some way.
Eveline Jaynes, Director of Talent Acquisition and Management at Laserfiche, knows the value of team members being able to contribute to causes that are near and dear to them. That’s why Laserfiche offers paid time off for those who want to volunteer their time for these causes. This underlines to everyone at the company that a career and a life are more than hours put in at the office.
Finding thoughtful and engaged advisors can sometimes be as simple as asking for feedback.
Savina Perez, Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer at Hone, shares a tactic that works for her: asking for feedback on a demo. A deeper relationship may develop from there, but if not, the team still receives high-quality feedback.
When offering live remote training across multiple time zones and cultures, it’s important to be responsive and relevant.
In this video clip, Savina Perez of Hone discusses the importance of making sure that all members of a remote team — and all external customers — feel that they are being responded to in a timely manner. Savina explains how she and her team have been optimizing for that challenge.
Diversity isn’t just about race or ethnicity, it’s also about different backgrounds.
Lee Kirby, Chairman & Co-Founder at Salute Mission Critical, sees more and more companies focusing on diversity and considers hiring veterans as an asset in this area. They can help to create stronger, more resourceful teams.
As he’s grown in his career, Ganesh Shankar, CEO and Co-Founder at RFPIO Inc., has been mindful of the expectations of his superiors.
Now that he’s CEO, it’s no different, except that the expectations come from those who report to him, rather than those he reports to. When dealing with his team he tries to keep fairness and equity part of every decision.
It’s understandably jarring to be competing against a company one week, then trying to work with them as a part of a unified company the next.
In this video clip, Ganesh Shankar of RFPIOIO, Inc., which has been through its share of acquisitions, agrees that acquiring competitors is challenging. There will be misalignments and disagreements at first, but as long as the new blended team can focus on working together, there’s every chance for success.
While many companies scrambled to get remote work organized when government restrictions came into effect during the pandemic, Dev Technology Group was not one of them.
In this video clip, Kendall Holbrookok shares Dev’s proactive stance when news of Covid started to spread: they sent all their teams home a week before any public restrictions came into effect and worked with clients to get them on board with the new situation.
Inna Kuznetsova, CEO at ToolsGroup, has a fascinating and unusual story to tell about her career in leadership.
Indeed, the twists and turns in that story are what she hopes will be her legacy: that people see the path she has taken and use it themselves to find easier paths or make fewer mistakes.
Because government contracts are developed over a period of time, fast sales are not the name of the game.
Instead, Kendall Holbrook, CEO at Dev Technology Group, wants customers to believe that Dev can deliver what’s necessary for a company to achieve its mission. By building that trust, she finds that customers more naturally select Dev when a contract is ready.
Honoring senior leadership has to be balanced with bringing in the next generation to take their place.
In this video clip, Alex Frommeyer of Beam Benefitsfits shares that balancing act. Part of which is listening to current and potential leaders wherever possible and also getting buy-in on change. Sometimes people will leave because of that change. That’s part of the necessary growth of all leadership teams.
Whenever anything dramatic happens in a company, like a layoff, for example, employees get very focused.
Alex Frommeyer, Founder and CEO at Beam Benefits, uses those moments of focus to push team members to get the job done. He sees these challenges as a great opportunity to regroup and push ahead with renewed purpose.
As a team grows, the professional development of leadership becomes more important, as their actions take on more impact.
Savina Perez, Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer at Hone, considers one-on-one meetings as a key ingredient in that personal development, including skip-level conversations, which can give leaders information they would not ordinarily have come across but can be helpful pieces of the larger strategic puzzle.
When lockdowns occurred, many companies were put in a dilemma about what to do with their team members who could no longer work.
In this video clip, Lucas Haldeman of SmartRent talks about the pressure he got from leadership to let a lot of his installing team go. But he successfully made the case for how hard these people were to find in the first place. By weathering the storm and taking what looked like a short-term dip in productivity, he and his team were able to meet the demand that came roaring back after only six weeks.
While he’s not bullish on remote work, Lucas Haldeman, CEO of SmartRent, doesn’t think that a return to the working world of the past is on the cards.
Instead of remote work as a norm, he thinks that concentrations of talent will lead to more startups blooming in more places, rather than being stuck in Silicon Valley or NYC.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion can’t just be seminars and education. It needs to be expressed in action.
Vishal Sunak, Co-Founder and CEO at LinkSquares, sees DEI as a mirror. Do prospective employees see reflections of themselves in gender, ethnicity, and different ways of life? If not, an organization has to do better.
As team members struggle to keep up with demands on their own time, they can occasionally lose sight of the fact that their customers are battling with the same issues.
Ganesh Shankar, CEO and Co-Founder at RFPIO, Inc. feels that deeply. He stresses to team members the importance of not adding another challenge to customers' load.
Each company has had to find the right work environment after the disruptions of the pandemic.
Vishal Sunak, Co-Founder and CEO at LinkSquares, has seen some real benefits in employees continuing to meet in person. While he has no plans to restrict remote work, he does wish to encourage more and more in-person interaction among his team.
Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The BragWorthy Culture Podcast posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Send a message to The BragWorthy Culture Podcast:
Just because you’re an American company doesn’t mean you have to do everything “the American way.” In this video clip, Rick Hammell of Atlas talks about his approach to working with clients in over 160 countries, speaking 98 different languages: he has to ensure that his team members are supported in their own language and cultural idiom (and time zone!) so that they, in turn, can support clients in the same way. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
Many companies went fully remote during the pandemic but have been experimenting with many variants since restrictions have been lifted. In this video clip, Michael Katz of mParticle notes that with an economic downturn looming, resources need to be invested in what matters most. He’s observed hiring and retention in the last few years and sees that fully remote is still working. Therefore, it will be their model of work for the foreseeable future. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
Even though Laserfiche has been operating in a fully remote capacity for some time, it recently broke ground on a new corporate headquarters. In this video clip, Eveline Jaynes of Laserfiche talks about the workspace Laserfiche hopes to create at this new headquarters, a place that is collaborative but also autonomous and independent. She hopes that this will help team members transition from being remote to optionally coming into the office three days a week. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
A mentor to Inna Kuznetsova of ToolsGroup encouraged her to look at how women were distributed throughout a company and to note that whenever there was a major drop-off, there was an opportunity. In this video clip, Inna shared how she used that experience to promote women into areas where they are less represented in order to help create a pipeline of experience for the future. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
A mentor to Inna Kuznetsova of ToolsGroup encouraged her to look at how women were distributed throughout a company and to note that whenever there was a major drop-off, there was an opportunity. In this video clip, Inna shared how she used that experience to promote women into areas where they are less represented in order to help create a pipeline of experience for the future. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
When offering live remote training across multiple time zones and cultures, it’s important to be responsive and relevant. In this video clip, Savina Perez of Hone discusses the importance of making sure that all members of a remote team — and all external customers — feel that they are being responded to in a timely manner. Savina explains how she and her team have been optimizing for that challenge. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
It’s understandably jarring to be competing against a company one week, then trying to work with them as a part of a unified company the next. In this video clip, Ganesh Shankar of RFPIOIO, Inc., which has been through its share of acquisitions, agrees that acquiring competitors is challenging. There will be misalignments and disagreements at first, but as long as the new blended team can focus on working together, there’s every chance for success. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
While many companies scrambled to get remote work organized when government restrictions came into effect during the pandemic, Dev Technology Group was not one of them. In this video clip, Kendall Holbrookok shares Dev’s proactive stance when news of Covid started to spread: they sent all their teams home a week before any public restrictions came into effect and worked with clients to get them on board with the new situation. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
Honoring senior leadership has to be balanced with bringing in the next generation to take their place. In this video clip, Alex Frommeyer of Beam Benefitsfits shares that balancing act. Part of which is listening to current and potential leaders wherever possible and also getting buy-in on change. Sometimes people will leave because of that change. That’s part of the necessary growth of all leadership teams. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
When lockdowns occurred, many companies were put in a dilemma about what to do with their team members who could no longer work. In this video clip, Lucas Haldeman of SmartRent talks about the pressure he got from leadership to let a lot of his installing team go. But he successfully made the case for how hard these people were to find in the first place. By weathering the storm and taking what looked like a short-term dip in productivity, he and his team were able to meet the demand that came roaring back after only six weeks. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
People need encouragement from colleagues, and technology can help make that encouragement easier to give. In this video clip, Vishal Sunak of LinkSquares talks about a Slack application the company uses that allows team members to give anonymous feedback about anyone, to share what kind of impact team members are making. Those people then get entered into a raffle. Reading these daily shoutouts offers encouragement to everyone. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
Gift-giving at Reachdesk wasn’t previously as sophisticated as it is today. It started out with sending handwritten notes. In this video clip, Temy Mancusi-Ungaro, Reachdesk CEO, talks about the evolution of the company’s gifting and fulfillment process to something that can, in a few clicks, touch people globally. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
Zoom fatigue affects all remote workers, but it can also help highlight the need to be intentional with digital tools. In this video clip, Sheri Kelleher of Incorta shares how respect for fellow team members in the changing world of work has led to more intentionality around when it’s appropriate to message digitally and when an in-person meeting may make more sense. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
While people at a company may know the names of the company’s values, to really drive understanding, team members have to be given multiple opportunities to see how those values work day-to-day. In this video clip, Roisin O’Hagan at Unosquare discusses the importance of senior leadership driving this communication through monthly meetings, town halls, road shows and other forums. There’s no such thing as overcommunicating when it comes to your values. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
Starting cultural research can be a challenge, but Dr. Alex Gapud at scarlettabbott proposes a simple solution: just start asking questions. In this video clip, Dr. Alex Gapud, gives a framework for starting the discussion, “What is it like in your corner of the organization?” In answering this question, team members will share information about their roles and the challenges they face. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
It can be tempting to use all-hands, in-person meetings to create a supercharged environment of work. In this video clip, Matt Oxley at Opal encourages companies to leave the more corporate work for other times and to see in-person meetings as a golden opportunity to foster connections and relationships with team members who rarely, if ever, can meet their colleagues in person. That connection will pay dividends when it’s time to get back to work. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
Because every action of leadership either strengthens or weakens company culture, leadership has a special responsibility to be aware of its decisions — and to always be looking to strengthen company culture. In this video clip, Brian Litvack of @LeagueApps looks at this responsibility as a beacon to the rest of the organization. If leadership, which has the most visibility, is living up to and embodying the values, they can inspire others to do the same. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
Despite only 40% of his workforce being able to work during the start of the conflict in Ukraine, the team was still delivering 95% on the road map. In this video clip, Vadim Yasinovsky of @airSlate / PDFfiller.com, cautions that while he applauds his team’s performance, he doesn’t want them working themselves to burnout; If they do, then they and their families are going to face even greater challenges. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr #bestplacestowork #workculture #employeebenefits
Many companies don’t start with a written set of values. In this video clip, Meredith Bronk of Open Systems Technologies, Inc. reflects on her company’s 25 years of operations (24 of which she’s been part of) and how it was only 15 years ago that its values were written down. But it wasn’t difficult to do because they were already living them. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr
Emotional slavery is caring about everyone’s feelings and judgments. On the other end of the spectrum is emotional detachment — not caring at all what your team thinks. In this video clip, Max Yoder at Lessonly by Seismic offers a middle ground: emotional liberation. This is the ability to be present with an individual and their experience, while also maintaining the proper boundaries not to carry that experience home with us. Without those boundaries, we won’t just be less useful to our team members, we risk emotional burnout ourselves. #bragworthyculture #peoplefirst #digitalwork #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #hr
Want your business to be the top-listed Media Company?
