For us, our culture is everything! Our ultimate goal is to create a culture where our teammates feel valued, engaged and supported to do their best work and bring their whole selves to work every day.
One of the ways that we measure if we are heading in the right direction is through our annual engagement survey. At the end of each year, we ask our teammates to provide feedback on various topics so that they can let us know what is working and what needs a little more attention. Our 2020 survey provided us with incredible insights. And, based on the feedback from our teammates, we have a lot to be proud of!
Our constant and deliberate effort resulted in 87% of our teammates taking part in the engagement survey, 87% of our teammates feeling proud to work at Kobie and an overall increase of our engagement score by 25% when compared with 2019.
To have achieved such results in a year like 2020 is nothing short of remarkable.
Despite the circumstances, we approached everything with a culture-first mentality. We capitalized on every opportunity to better define and put into practice how we work together, support and show up for each other. While a million little (and big) things contribute to the overall company culture, there were several key initiatives that significantly helped shaped our culture. We focused on leadership, transparency and communication as being the heart of everything we did, we focused on embracing, sharing and celebrating our diversity, we put our freedom and responsibility principals into practice with our work from home model, we standardized processes and procedures – just to name a few.
Some of our highlights include:
Leadership & Communication
A continuous focus on leadership has significantly shaped our culture. Therefore, it is no surprise that our teammates recognized the improvements in our leadership, with almost a 50% increase on our scores when compared year-over-year (YOY).
We believe that everyone is a leader and offer various developmental opportunities to expand leadership skills. However, the ripple effect of having strong leaders who oversee large teams is exponential. In the past two years, we restructured our Executive Leadership Team to align with business priorities and formalized a new Senior Leadership Team to act as force multipliers for cultural efforts. Our Leadership Teams are committed to a culture-first mentality, supporting teammates and making meaningful impacts across Kobie.
Transparency is a key tenant of our culture. We have several mechanisms in place, including open-door policies that extend all the way to our CEO, required 1:1s for everyone, skip-level meetings, monthly Q&As and forums, and regular lunch and learns on various topics. We encourage teammates to be curious, dive deep, and ask questions – our goal is to share honest answers to help drive growth and performance.
Diversity & Inclusion
We are diverse and proud of it. We don’t just accept differences – we embrace, share, and celebrate them! An incredible 94% of teammates reported that they feel that Kobie values diversity and inclusion. This achievement is a result of Kobie’s dedication to having an inclusive work environment and a diverse workforce. This year, we introduced a reinvigorated Diversity & Inclusion Committee to support our cultural and corporate efforts. This committee provides teammates with a platform to implement ideas and initiatives that celebrate D&I efforts. Our people are the reason for Kobie’s success, and we are proud to foster an inclusive environment where teammates can bring their whole, authentic selves to work each day.
Work/Life Balance
At Kobie, we believe that caring for our employees means investing in their whole self – both inside and outside of work. We are committed to providing our teammates with resources to improve their wellbeing and the wellbeing of their families, as well as the opportunity to create an effective work-life balance. We believe in setting the expectations upfront and giving teammates the freedom and responsibility to manage their own deadlines and deliverables. This has been particularly crucial to our continued success during COVID. In March this year, we were one of the first companies to go fully remote and our teammates have continued to thrive under the circumstances.
While we are taking a moment to celebrate the remarkable strides made in 2020 to improve our culture, the work does not stop for us! We are incredibly aware that how we show-up day-to-day for each other manifests as our overall company culture.
