Companies That Stand Apart

Companies need good employees to grow and for the employees to stay loyal and put in their very best on a daily basis, the companies need to be good to them in turn. Not just the Founder, the Board and the Top management but all the employees need to be invested in the overall growth and wellness of the company. A toxic work culture is just going to eat into the productivity, create dissatisfaction and chaos within the organization, leading to a high attrition rate.

There are companies, who win big - both in the market front and the people front. This week we are looking at three such successful companies (two International and one Indian), that have a good work culture going for themselves and their employees and we will see what they have done right.

#Salesforce:

Co-CEOs – Mark Benioff and Bret Taylor

Located in San Francisco, California, United States of America

Salesforce is a SaaS company, founded in 1999 by Marc Benioff, along with Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez. It is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool that encompasses software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, analytics, and application development. The company currently employs 42,862 U.S.-based employees.

Most Recent Awards:

Forbes 2022 The Best Employers for Women

Forbes 2022 The Best Employers in Technology

Forbes 2022 The Best Workplaces for Millennials

People 2022 Companies that Care

#What they did right:

Salesforce was conceived as an idea, when Marc Benioff (working in Oracle then) had been on a sabbatical while at Hawaii and India. He wanted to have a CRM that would stand apart from the major companies like Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, etc. Salesforce was thus brought to life as an on-demand completely web-based service. While the major leaders had the large companies as their clients, Salesforce turned its focus on the smaller and medium companies (SMBs) and it worked as these relatively smaller players in the field preferred Salesforce as they did not have to invest on any extra hardware and software for their CRM.

“Ohana” (meaning Family) is the basis of the work culture here. The core values of the company are Trust, Customer Success, Innovation, Equality, and Sustainability. They keep Trust as their number one value and to ensure that across for all stakeholders, clients and employees they have:

Been maintaining a devoted site--trust.salesforce.com--with real-time information on the system performance and security
Created a Trust Academy to help their customers learn ways to keep their applications secure
Empowered all employees to complete an Annual Security Awareness and Code of Conduct Training

They try to inculcate the ‘family’ part of the work culture; as each employee takes the core values to heart and they make themselves accountable for upholding them.

92% say that the management is honest and ethical in its business practices.
92% say that they are proud to tell others they work here.
90% of employees at Salesforce say it is a great place to work compared to 57% of employees at a typical U.S.-based company.

Also, the company encourages the employees give back to the community by:

1. Providing them with 7 full paid days of volunteer time off per year,

2. Granting a donation of up to $5,000 by matching donations per year ($2,500 given at the start of the fiscal year, and an additional $2,500 unlocked after achieving five or more “Impact Milestones”)

Salesforce Employee -

“It's an extremely civic minded company - a true corporate citizen that is active and progressive. I genuinely feel that our leaders and our company are invested in progressive values - diversity, inclusion, environment, volunteering/giving back. I feel so lucky to work here and it truly makes me want to go above and beyond in order to stay as long as possible!!”

And thus, Salesforce proves to be a winner, due to encouraging the “Ohana” culture in its employees and by instilling a sense of accountability and a responsibility of giving back to the community in them.

#Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina:

President and CEO - Tunde Sotunde

Located in North Carolina, United States of America

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina founded in 1933, a not-for-profit headquartered in Durham, is the biggest medicare and insurance provider of North Carolina state in the United States of America. It has provided health plans for more than 4 million North Carolinians in all 100 counties of the state.

Most Recent Awards:

Forbes 2022 The Best Employers for Women

Forbes 2022 The Best Employers for Diversity

#What they did right:

While designing their Trust Index survey in 2016, the team had added a question “How many times in the last six months have you had a meaningful conversation with your leader?”. This was a way to measure the frequency of meaningful conversations happening within the teams, and the results were shocking. Thus, they placed meaningful conversations as a change agent, as there is a correlation between such conversations and positive employee experiences.

With culture as a core value of the company, meaningful conversations were thus embedded into performance conversations, change training, and leadership development practices.

As per Perri Mathews, Manager, Culture Transformation and Change at Blue Cross NC -

“Our 2018 survey data showed that folks who were having fewer than two meaningful conversations in the past six months were having a less positive experience overall than our internal benchmark of 82. Those who had three to five meaningful conversations exceeded our internal benchmark. Anyone with six or more meaningful conversations exceeded our 2021 enterprise scorecard goal and were also having a ‘Top 100’ experience. This trend held true in our 2019 data as well.”

In 2018, a major cultural transformation began for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of NC, as their executive team wanted to remodel their values, mission, vision and strategies around “People and Culture.” This was the first time that people and culture were revered as an area of strength. When everything had to be centered around people and culture of the company, it was a mammoth task to recenter all their core values and to make it happen. But this change paved way to major success for the organization.

They have won various accolades for the same as awards and their company statistics speak for the success of this change:

92% of its employees feel that when you join the company, you are made to feel welcome.
91% feel good about the ways they contribute to the community.
85% of employees at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina say it is a great place to work compared to 57% of employees at a typical U.S.-based company.

With managers being empowered with their own data using a data tool known as Emprising, it got easier for them to conduct meaningful and data-driven conversations at every level of the organization, leading to a higher connection and satisfaction level with all the employees.

Thus, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina is also a winner, due to putting its people and culture first.

#Meesho:

Co- Founder and CEO - Vidit Aatrey

Co-Founder and CTO - Sanjeev Barnwal

Located in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Meesho founded in 2015 is an online platform for resellers to setup a business for free. Meesho provides its customers with timely and secure payments, shipping services, and low returns. It is trusted by more than 2.6 million resellers across India and 20,000 manufacturers, and it aims to diversify more to reach 100 million monthly transacting users by December 2022.

#What they did right:

Meesho has announced an 11-day reset and recharge break for their employees for the second consecutive year now. They have prioritized their employee's well-being again.

The various changes they have brought about to encourage and empower their employees and make for an employee-first work culture are:

1) Inclusive policies: Gender-neutral parental leave, LGBTQ partner insurance, infertility coverage, gender reassignment leave.

2) Self-improvement programmes: Employees have been encouraged to pursue hobbies/ interests/ further education outside of work on a fully-reimbursable basis.

3) Boundary-less workplace: Work from anywhere in the world is possible for a Meesho employee.

4) Infinite wellness leaves: Meesho supports its’ employees when they want to prioritize their personal needs. This initiative showcases how much they value mental health of their employees.

5) MeeSops Programme: Meesho gives their employees a chance to have better ownership of the organization. This way they are loyal and show better work performance and it allows every single employee to benefit from Meesho’s rapid growth.

They have set a good example for Indian companies to follow suit and put their employees and their wellbeing first and foremost.