We put culture first by turning the traditional employee experience upside-down and concentrating on employees before profits. Team members have a high level of autonomy and responsibility, fostered by an intentional feeling of collaboration as opposed to dictation from managers. We offer a relaxed office setting and give remote employees everything they need to set up a home office. Benefits include free health and dental insurance, unlimited vacation time and $2,500 per year for continued learning and development, as well as 12 weeks of 100 percent paid leave for new parents.

As an almost completely virtual company, we establish our culture through consistent, open, engaged communication across the organization. We use collaboration tools to make sure any employee can reach out to anyone else at any time to ask for help or have a discussion. We prefer real-time learning opportunities over annual reviews, which are too often biased. We deploy "coaching managers" to help employees navigate the company and their career. And we consistently remind everyone in the company that we are a service organization, which keeps us attentive to our customers' needs.

Hiring with our culture in mind means team members share the core values, and our values remain strong during periods of change. In 2020, we relied on our resilience to adapt quickly to working remotely while supporting our members and developing innovative software tools. We leveraged tech-based communication channels to strengthen our relationships. No one ever needs to plow through emails or rush from meeting to meeting. From friendly check-ins to researching new processes to organizing fun activities, we continue to build on our shared values.

We have a collaborative culture where all employees share ideas and get continuous feedback, and we ensure everyone is mapping to their career goals. We look for new ideas throughout the organization, from interns to executives. The pandemic created challenges, but we adapted, using the tools we could to keep cohesion and culture. We’ve held Zoom happy hours, team-building exercises, and a cooking class. Our CEO filled company leadership roles by promoting from within, while also hiring to increase diversity among the executive staff.

At Subsplash, we strive daily to develop one core value in particular: humility. We recognize the strengths that colleagues bring to our workplace and better ourselves through exposure to those strengths. By highlighting the gifts and talents that make each of our colleagues unique, we strengthen our company and are better equipped to serve our clients' needs. We believe that humility can fuel organizational growth and that evidence of this can be found in our hiring practices, our acceptance of feedback, and, ultimately, the performance of the company.