At West Monroe, employees have worked on nearly every continent. They’ve invested time in social causes ranging from literacy and clean water to economic empowerment, refugee aid and human trafficking prevention. You’d think they were workers of a humanitarian non-profit or NGO. But no, West Monroe is a digital consulting firm of over 2,000 people — but with one heck of a perk.
“We know that our people want to do work that matters, both personally and professionally,” said Kurtis Lindahl, talent business partner at West Monroe. The Fischer Fellowship program is one such growth opportunity offered at this company with a Los Angeles office, allowing employees to take three- to six-months of paid leave for philanthropic pursuits.
In the current hiring environment, workers can afford to be more selective in their workplace. As a result, tech companies competing for talent are curating unique and eye-catching policies that showcase their transparency, flexibility and in the case of West Monroe, career and personal growth.
No go-to strategy for tempting new hires is the same. At WhoCo, their jazz-inspired, riff-off environment supports an open-door culture that gives employees access to granular performance metrics. Meanwhile, Mothership opts for a more economic transparency in the form of five compensation packages to choose from at the offering stage and equity valuation estimates for its workers. Want to come up with your own product? Gaming company MobilityWare lets employees pitch ideas that can become projects. And at flexibility-forward ComplYant, it’s a free-form workflow — if you can make the deadlines, you can make your own schedule.
While compensation and benefits remain the bedrock foundation of generating interest in job listings, it’s the final touch — a little transparency and growth here, a pinch of flexibility there — that really puts pen to the offer letter. Roles are filled, but it’s people that do the work. Recruiting priorities might focus on skills and attributes, but it’s important for hiring companies to note: Appeal to the person, not the ideal candidate.
“What everyone is doing when they aren’t working makes them really interesting,” said Sabrina Kelly, WhoCo’s chief talent officer. To get a closer look at how these five Los Angeles companies attract talent, Built In LA sat down with the employees that are drawn to the very same principles that they espouse today.
West Monroe Partners is a consulting firm with a focus on digital services.
What is one standout career development opportunity your company offers employees?
West Monroe takes career development very seriously, and we encourage our people to develop and bring out the best in others. In fact, our mission is to build the next generation of leaders.
There are so many great career development opportunities so it’s hard to choose just one, but I’d say our Fischer Fellowship Program is incredibly special and unique to West Monroe. The program provides West Monroe employees with a three- to six-month fully paid leave to support a philanthropic and humanitarian issue of interest that matters to them, anywhere in the world. Our more than 32 Fischer Fellows have supported causes that include literacy, clean water, gender equity, mental and behavioral health, economic empowerment, infrastructure development, human trafficking, the refuge crisis and more on nearly every continent.
We know that our people want to do work that matters, both personally and professionally, and that is why we designed these formal career development programs that allow our employees to serve a bigger purpose and expand their comfort zones.
What is one way your company supports open communication and transparency?
Open communication and transparency are practiced from the top down at West Monroe. We’re not only committed to open dialogue about business and financial performance through regular town halls and office meetings, but also coming together to talk about tough topics that matter to our people. After all, we want our people to bring their authentic selves to work every day. One way we do this is by hosting frequent employee listening sessions. Our employee listening sessions create a safe space where our employees can come and breathe, learn, listen, share and remember they are never alone. We bring in a third-party experts to support bold conversations on topics such as burnout and stress reduction, finding fulfillment after a year of uncertainty, gender identity and pronouns, challenges for consulting moms, #StopAsianHate and more.
We understand that the daily office commute is the working world of yesterday.”
What is your company’s approach to flexible work?
Being a people-first organization is one of our core values, which means it is essential to recognize the work-life blend that is critical for our people to feel fulfilled. Knowing this, we implemented a hybrid work model for our offices as well as with clients.
We want our employees to want to come into the office — and they still do — because of the strong culture we’ve built. But, we understand that the daily office commute is the working world of yesterday, so we intentionally establish days that encourage West Monroe employees to come to the office and be together, whether it’s a happy hour, Donut Day or a special team meeting.
We also have the flexibility and responsibility to intentionally choose the most effective ways to engage with our clients, which allows our project teams to serve clients who have various needs; whether it be completely remote or monthly client site visits for key deliverable readout, we recognize that we all need flexibility.
WhoCo offers software to help companies with the talent recruiting process.
What is one standout career development opportunity your company offers employees?
At WhoCo, we play jazz. We use that metaphor because as we build teams we’re looking for people who have mastered their craft, and who really thrive in collaborative environments. They love to create, and they love to riff off others to produce something exciting and original.
We are highly collaborative and believe in bringing small cross-functional groups together to solve big problems. We believe that this approach creates both great exposure and opportunity for impact within the company, regardless of what level or team you come from. This approach leads to serendipitous horizontal learning opportunities. For example, having a recruiter consult with our design team and give feedback on the user experience creates both understanding of processes they wouldn’t typically gain exposure to in a traditional company as well as empathy for the roles that others play in the organization. We think this way of learning really bends the concept of traditional career leaders and leads to well-rounded professionals that understand and appreciate the disciplines needed to make a technology company successful.
What is one way your company supports open communication and transparency?
Our culture of support and transparency starts in our product and service. It’s rooted in how we engage clients and candidates in our product, and extends to how we hire and how we treat each other in our own teams. Our recruiting partners keep clients up-to-date on progress with their open roles, and candidates always know where they are in the process — we abhor ghosting. We also give our candidates their interview questions ahead of time. We want them to be able to shine, and honestly, we think it helps our clients get a better picture of the people they’re considering hiring.
Internally, our leadership team is transparent around company strategy. We always keep our team informed on what the plan is and how we’re progressing, as well as let them ask us questions. On top of that, every employee at WhoCo has easy access to company OKRs and our performance. In a company of our size, that’s as good as it gets — but at a bigger company, this is unheard of.
At WhoCo, we play jazz.”
What is your company’s approach to flexible work?
The goals for our team are ambitious, but as long as people are meeting deadlines, we don’t mind when the work gets done. This requires a huge element of trust, but everyone is invested in the product and each other, so we know anyone can raise their hand when they need support.
Our team is distributed across five time zones, so flexibility to us means being highly communicative. We have tons of channels where everyone gives regular updates, offers encouragement and asks for advice. Sometimes it’s a quick Slack, sometimes a standup on Zoom, all the way to a big, quarterly in-person all-company gathering at WhoCo HQ. The trick is knowing when, which channel and how often to reach out. We’re constantly tweaking the way and frequency in which we communicate.
We also recognize that all of us have vibrant lives outside of work. Parents need to sign off, people need to take breaks and take vacations, and that’s okay. This is a weird, scary, stressful time, so if someone needs to unplug and go for a walk, we don’t want them to feel bad about it. Besides, what everyone is doing when they aren’t working makes them really interesting! So we celebrate it. It makes us better as a team.
Mothership is a digital platform for freight delivery management.
What is one standout career development opportunity your company offers employees?
At Mothership, every team member has the opportunity to grow their skills and gain new experiences. If you want to get something done or believe there is a better way to do something, the door is open. Everyone has a voice here and is encouraged to use it. Our quarterly reviews foster development by creating a transparent outline for improving performance at the current level and defining what’s required to elevate to the next role.
What is one way your company supports open communication and transparency?
Mothership believes in open communication and transparency. We’ve adopted an open door policy for all employees, which means every manager’s door is open to every employee. The policy aims to encourage open communication, feedback and discussion about matters of importance. Employees are encouraged to talk with their manager about any issues or concerns.
Additionally, we’re focused on compensation transparency. We believe it’s vital to offer a range of compensation packages so you have the power to make the appropriate financial decision for yourself and your family. Upon offer, you will receive a breakdown of five different cash versus equity packages to choose from, with additional information on estimated equity valuation.
Compensation Transparency at Mothership
- Cash and equity in options
- 99 percent employer-covered medical, vision, dental and disability insurance.
- Work-from-home and monthly internet stipends
- 4 percent 401(k) match
We are committed to paying our employees fairly, not just at the offer stage but as they move up within the company. It’s essential that as the company grows, our employees grow with it.
What is your company’s approach to flexible work?
We are a fully remote company, and our team is not bound to a physical office or preferred time zone. We want to hire the best talent regardless of location. Our goal is to have a strong culture of asynchronous communication that encourages more transparent documentation, discourages synchronous meetings and provides greater flexibility to all employees.
To adapt to this new environment, we do not have specific hours defined outside our core hours from 12-4 p.m. Central Time. We’ve also implemented no-meeting days on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which give people the chance to focus on their own work and remove a significant amount of distraction.
ComplYant is a software platform that helps small businesses manage tax obligations.
What is one standout career development opportunity your company offers employees?
Cross-functional learning is probably the greatest standout opportunity we offer. We think of it as your opportunity to make the best of your work experience. We think that whatever you want to learn, you can. If you are in marketing and want to learn more about customer success we support and allow split training. Or let’s say you are in customer success and have been learning to code; we encourage you to split your time with the engineering team putting your new learnings to good use. We want you to leave us better than when you came in.
What is one way your company supports open communication and transparency?
We support open communication by inviting feedback from all staff and actually listening and implementing that feedback where it makes sense to do so. We also practice surveying the team for insight and varied opinions and ideas. We are in build mode, so it is important for us to have the insight of the people that are working on the tool and supporting the users.
In addition, we want ComplYant to be a place where people want to work, and there’s no better way to build that than with the assistance of the people that are working here. Transparency is one of our pillars. Our core values specifically state to connect through transparency. Because we are a remote first environment, authentic connection requires transparency. This means transparency in salaries, titles, goals, financial position of the company and anything else that attributes to the success of ComplYant as a whole. We also encourage our team to communicate with each other as honestly and transparently as possible.
We want you to leave us better than when you came in.”
What is your company’s approach to flexible work?
We are a fully remote, flexible work culture. We believe that your time should be divided in a way that is most beneficial for your work style. And that doesn’t always look the same for every person. We do not practice a 9-5 set schedule but instead encourage time management coaching and deadline-driven initiatives. That means if you are a productive, efficient contributor and you get through your tasks by Thursday, then you are free to take Fridays off, or if you work better on a split day with a few hours in the middle to enjoy lunch at the park with your kids, then we encourage it. We think it’s better to optimize for the work you are tasked with, rather than trying to fit as much work as possible into a given shift. We also feel that it leads to better work-life balance and more productive mental health and self-care practices.
MobilityWare is a mobile gaming company.
What is one standout career development opportunity your company offers employees?
Each year, everyone at MobilityWare looks forward to our annual Game Jam. Game Jam offers all team members, no matter what their role at the company, the ability to develop their own game. Anyone who’s interested can pitch their idea to the company and recruit others to work on their dream project. Past winners have even had the opportunity to have their title selected for publishing, becoming the company’s next major game release. This gives everyone at the company an opportunity to showcase their creativity and sharpen their game design skills.
What is one way your company supports open communication and transparency?
We actively promote open communication and transparency by providing workshops and seminars on leadership development, communication and other best practices. These training opportunities are offered to all team members, regardless of seniority or role. This is reinforced by a strong culture of understanding, acceptance and open dialog between team members as well as departments.
Anyone who’s interested can pitch their idea to the company and recruit others to work on their dream project.”
What is your company’s approach to flexible work?
Recently, MobilityWare announced that every team member would be able to set their own flexible policy contingent on their respective manager’s approval. This policy is intended to provide maximum flexibility while ensuring that all team members are engaged and invested in both their own career development and the continued growth of the company.
