We are honored to announce that we have been certified as a Great Place to Work after a thorough, independent analysis conducted by Great Place to Work® Canada.
We have received recognition as a GPTW in Technology and Mental Wellness from 2022-2023. This the second year 2toLead has been recognized as a great place to work.
It is our pleasure to share what helped us achieve this accomplishment, but first, a little about the GPTW Institute and a quick thank you.
Since 1980, the Great Place to Work survey has evaluated employers based on employees' direct feedback as part of an extensive and anonymous survey about their workplace experience.
Along with offering Great Place to Work certification, they work with publications in 49 countries to put together recognized 'Best place to Work' lists. Their lists appear with Fortune and the Globe and Mail.
To become Great Place to Work certified, employers must have outstanding workplace culture and employee experience. Submissions from employees in the GPTW survey ultimately determine the results.
Employees answer questions about company culture, leadership team, and employee engagement to see if the organization aligns with the GPTW meaning. The employee survey asks if they would recommend the company to job seekers. Does the team of employees work well together? These factors are what makes a great place to work!
We wanted to share and acknowledge that our team is a huge reason why we are a great place to work. A massive shout-out from all our hearts at 2toLead to our employees for continuing to share feedback. It helps us continue to improve and be a great workplace and certified company. The people on the team are what makes a company a great place to work!
We could list any number of work culture investments we have made as a company, and they would only be relevant if our employees responded. They aid us in finding the right fit or the best way to implement and improve upon them. We asked our employees if they would like to say something about working at 2toLead and help you understand why we are a Great Place to Work.
Why is 2toLead a great place to work?
The following are a few of the critical investments that enable us to be a better place to work.
It's essential for employees to feel like they can pursue the right course of action and support one another. In our business, self-direction is paramount, which means by design, we trust the judgment of our employees. Instead of waiting to approve overages, employees know they can help first and worry about reporting second. Our team is flexible work additional hours to support a customer or help a struggling peer in a pinch.
We have systems to create visibility, review, and highlight extra investments to our customers and peers. We have better transparency and acknowledgment of our team's efforts and represent the 'total value better' driven to our peers.
This approach has other implications as well. We could only be generous if we compensated employees fairly and generously and they were satisfied working here. We can only be generous to our customers if we deliver above expectations or have achieved high customer satisfaction.
Another thing we do here is that we donate a percentage of revenue every year to inspiring (and team-directed) charities.
We also have a bonus+ program that enables all our employees to distribute "micro bonuses" to peers who have helped them or whom they see as having contributed positively. Pairing our micro-bonus program with generous quarterly bonus rhythms allows us to recognize and acknowledge effort in a meaningful way. It gives us an edge to become a certified great workplace. These perks are available for all employees (even contractors)!
We have created a culture of sharing often and clearly. Our estimates have ranging values since much of our business isn't perfectly predictable (we work with emerging technology and complex problems in the people and services business, after all). Our culture of sharing takes a lot of pressure off estimates. This environment helps with the communication of risks, gaps in dependencies, or missing insights that might help the estimator.
Also, this changes how we make changes, discuss ideas, and more. For example, we have an offsite (though the last few were virtual) for each fiscal half.
All employees have multiple days dedicated to discussing how to improve the company, where data and insights often reserved for executives are openly shared and leveraged across teams. As a remote-first organization, we understand that trust-building is more accessible in person. We will fly our team from across Canada often to connect in person, collaborate, and have fun while working on the best ways to continue improving and innovating.
During this offsite and throughout the year, we maintain an operations backlog, action lists. Our ideas are transparent and accessible to the whole organization. We even have a team of culture volunteers to help prioritize and understand the many concepts. They focus on improving how we manage, work with one another, or work with our customers.
We have translated this transparency into meaningful operating rules to keep us unbiased.
For example, we never obfuscate our work or source code. Our excellent consulting and design work product is freely available to our customers.
Our team avoids 'fake billing' and doesn't overcharge for re-use or "IP Hours" like others in the industry. Instead, we only charge for real value (hours/effort spent), implementing what has proven to work with other customers.
We do this for internal solutions and products, but we also maintain this in working with partners. As another example, we provide service vouchers for the commissions or discounts we receive from vendors. While ensuring there is no financial bias towards our IP or our partners' IP, we enable customers to do accomplish with their investments. What is best for the customer motivates and aligns with how we make our revenue.
Every employee has a monthly 1:1 with their manager. Every employee has a monthly 1:1 with at least one mentor/peer in addition to their manager. These 1:1's provide consistent motions that are important to ensure we regularly discuss what's working well, what's not working well, and how the connecting individual can help. They are great opportunities to discuss professional development questions/challenges and foster growth in the individual.
Moreover, we have structured quarterly connects that feed into a final annual rhythm. When combining this motion with monthly 1:1's, there are no surprises, and it's easier for us to improve together.
Consistent and formal motions are vital because they guarantee discussions on essential questions like "how effectively are your skills (including all your prior experience) put to use within2toLead?".
Questions like this one might highlight how an individual could do more if their responsibilities and opportunities are tailored to their skill profile. We want to enable them to bring their whole self and value to their work. These also help us (along with peer reviews) better understand how our team members work with one another, as collaboration is a core part of our work.
Discussions on compensation, supervisor satisfaction, job security, peer feedback, and more occur multiple times a year, and let us follow trends. Our proactive approach helps us identify positively trending progress earlier and more often (and creates opportunities to escalate when they aren't). It makes the 'annual' rhythm far easier
since it feels like any other quarter where we review the previous connect outcomes/highlights. There only tends to be a few -if any - surprises on both sides as a result.
The business should be as flexible as our people need it to be. Our employees trade their time for money, growth, and more. That means we need always to respect their time and contributions.
For us, this means investing in additional company holidays or days off. We provide additional sick days for all staff. We honor more holidays (so there are more days off for all staff more regularly). We work hard to give extra days off around offsites to enable more celebration.
Additionally, during the pandemic, all our employees had mental relief or covid relief days - essentially free vacation days for all employees. On many occasions, staff (especially during the pandemic) needed extreme flexibility or more time away. We have been extremely generous and have done whatever we could here to help (investing a considerable amount). We wanted to thank our team for their flexibility in enabling us to support these emotions.
Sometimes, people need time to pursue something important even when there isn't a pandemic. On multiple occasions, our staff has had supported sabbaticals and part-time arrangements to pursue their goals outside of work.
We’ve supported our people in mobile app development, building a business with a friend, teaching at a college, and focusing on family while still employed at 2toLead.
For some staff, development support might be having dedicated days for training to hone or grow their skills and expertise. Today we provide five days for focused training each year (in addition to offsites, project specific learning, and more). We cover the cost of all Microsoft exams and have covered the tuition of courses outside of our technology focus. Whatever helps someone become more well-rounded or excellent in professional or personal areas of focus.
Moreover, we actively encourage employees to pursue their passions – often paying for trips and hotels and provide team members opportunities to speak at user groups, conferences, and events.
It is a great way to help improve employees’ brand, speaking and communication. This helps them establish their reputation for their future career.
We don't limit this to in-person speaking events; it could be for virtual events, an employee writing content important to them (books, articles, etc.), or exploring a passion. We support time back from work, monetary investment, and support services. We often introduce valuable connections that help that employee for decades to come.
Our team continues to grow, and if you're the right fit, we would love to add you to our team of passionate and hard-working individuals.
For more information on open opportunities, apply below.
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