Comparably CEO Jason Nazar sat down with Laura Butler to learn how the company fosters an influential culture, discovers the best cultural fits, and earns consistently high marks from employees in terms of job satisfaction. Laura serves Workfront as Senior Vice President of People and Culture. The Utah-based company was founded in 2001 and is dedicated to developing new, web-based work and project management software. Workfront is currently 1,000+ employees strong, serving over 3,000 customers from offices both domestic and abroad.
A focus on human potential
Laura Butler has always been motivated by human potential. She discovered this early – while chaperoning a camping trip with a group of people with developmental disabilities. “We had campfires and s’mores. We crafted and fished together. It amazed me to watch a variety of people with different skill sets accomplishing things out of their comfort zone, and innovating along the way. The participants had a mindset of ‘I think I can’ vs. focusing on any limitation”
For Butler, the after-effects of that camping trip stayed in her mind years later, which led her to the position she holds today. “People have limitless boundaries,” Butler says, “and before that camping trip, I might have overlooked that.” In her experience, she has learned that highlighting someone’s potential is more valuable and worthwhile than the temptation to focus on the things that are missing.
Laura believes there is power in fusing technology with intellect and collaboration. Once an employee has been given a clear purpose, the right training, and a healthy working environment, they most often rise to the challenge and do extraordinary work. This has been the driving force behind her career in global talent management.
Employee sentiments are sky-high
A look at Workfront’s company page on Comparably.com shows that the company’s employees are hyper-enthusiastic about their work culture, rating it with an A+. This cumulative grade is determined from Comparably’s 18 core metrics. For 15 of those metrics, Workfront employees gave individual A+ grades. Those categories include:
It’s clear to see this company is beloved by its employees, and has the secret sauce for stellar job satisfaction.
The greatest ideas in the room
Laura believes there’s an element of magic in every person. “It’s important to help nurture and bring out the unique spark in each employee. This helps not only drive innovation, but also employee satisfaction and engagement,” she says. Workfront employees and their grand ideas are what makes the working environment not only productive, but enjoyable as well. In fact, Workfront customers often cite Workfront employees as a competitive advantage – and a key reason they are raving fans of the Software as a Service company.
Currently, Butler’s team is looking for ways in which they can harness the power of breakout performance through strategic goal setting and skill development with a focus on breaking down organizational silo’s. When employees participate in a boundaryless work environment, they find solutions that are bigger than themselves.
The extra mile
Everyone wants to get ahead in their career, and Laura Butler’s advice in doing this is to go the extra mile, the extra ten percent. It’s crucial to first understand what your job is and to do it well. After you’ve mastered that, refuse to believe your job description limits what you can do without ‘stepping on toes’. Once you’ve shown that you can not only do your job well, but do it in a uniquely positive way, you’ll have leadership’s trust and encouragement to grow into another role.
Noting how her own role has evolved, Butler says she’s thankful for having held stepping stone jobs along the way. “I was an administrative assistant, and I did that job well. Then, I wanted to show that I was capable of more, so I put in an extra ten percent by learning how to code and create programs that automated some of what I was doing, which made me an easy choice for promotion when it came around. There is always something that can be done better and differently.”
The key to creating a high performing culture is feedback. Workfront trains all leaders on the principles of ‘Radical Candor’ and provides the tools for them to put that into action. The below charts show that 95% of employees receive feedback on work performance at least quarterly.
Exponential amounts of teamwork
CEO Alex Shootman joined Workfront in 2016, the same year the company was named on both Forbes’ first Cloud 100 list and, for the fourth consecutive year, Deloitte’s Fast 500 list.
Shootman’s strong leadership reputation benefits Workfront employees time and time again. In a few talking points from his book Done Right,he encourages management to motivate their teams to do the work they’re being led to do. He discusses the importance of determining the best next action for every situation. “In doing this,” he says, “employees will learn where to focus their time and attention and management will be more readily available to measure what really counts.” All of these small steps furtherWorkfront’s mission: to help employees do their best work.
Helping people do their best work
In order to make the office a productive space, Workfront leadership has created a hive-like office, which helps employees dig their heels into the work. Workfront offers collaborative huddle-spaces for teams to chart, discuss, and brainstorm for upcoming projects. Purposeful space helps employees solve client problems quicker and more effectively, and it makes room for work of a high caliber. This increases profits, makes board members happy, and helps contribute to job satisfaction on the employees’ end.
Workfront leadership reinforces core company values in quarterly Town Hall meetings, where Shootman, takes thoughtful measures to marry each value to a member of the team. Every quarter, he highlights an individual who is a role model for Workfront’s values, and shares how they exhibited one of the four company values for all employees to learn from. Additionally, all leaders are trained on Workfront’s values as part of the Workfront Leadership Institute, which is facilitated by Alex Shootman and his executive team.
Four core values
According to Laura Butler, effective and dynamic collaboration doesn’t come naturally. Developing an increased rate of productivity among employees is a multifaceted process. It takes time and leadership engagement. Ideally, a company’s healthy culture and receptivity of new ideas will foster strong team bonding and encourage employees to reach their full potential. It is only after cultivating this type of environment that employees can do their best work.
When a company has a clear vision, trust in one another, and each individual takes pride in the incredible culture to which they contribute, people contribute their best. Workfront having a clear mission, ‘To help people do their best work’ unifies all team members and customers. Through the software, customers are enabled to do their best work.
Workfront’s mission is achieved with the following core values:
- Obsess over customers
- Do great work
- Finish strong
- Win together
Soon after Alex Shootman joined Workfront in 2016, these core values were shaped by the leadership team and several others in the business, and then implemented. “Alex felt there was an opportunity to more deliberately focus the values we’d previously established,” Butler says, “so he pulled in operational leaders throughout Workfront to analyze which changes could be made in order to accomplish what was needed for the future of the company.” Ultimately, the team honed in on the importance of behaviors that exemplify the four core values, and began hiring and developing those skills.
Hiring for values
Workfront is a recognizable name with an impressive reputation, and people want the opportunity to be employed by the company. The tricky part isn’t getting applications through, it’s finding the right cultural fit.
One of the company’s most practical innovations was in the creation of an interview rubric called “Fit for Values.” It was designed as a quick-and-easy guide for leadership to determine which candidates might be stellar cultural fits. For example, the interviewer might ask the candidate to define what it means to “win together,” and their answer would help determine how they’d best fit on the Workfront team. The objective of the ‘fit for values’ guide is to find a potential employee who understands the importance of team collaboration over individual success.
An important part of Workfront’s culture is the commitment they’ve made to promote from within whenever possible.
Leadership says that promoting people from within who exemplify workfront values often leads to the best hires while improving engagement and team morale. “People are encouraged by internal mobility, and they tend to watch how coworkers are able to move into different roles and feel more confident in their future and potential with the company. ” Butler says. “Other employees watch whomever has just been promoted, and if leadership has promoted people who just ‘get work done’ vs. ‘doing it right’ –it’s extremely difficult to move the culture forward.”
Establishing healthy culture
In terms of workplace culture, proactivity and strategy are key. A lot of organizations leave culture to develop organically, which can create surprises and at worst, a faction of the culture in which toxicity is permitted to thrive. When a company commits to intentional hiring, onboarding, and promoting within, strong, healthy culture develops over time. A cultural plan is as crucial to a company as a business strategy is.
To achieve a healthy blend of culture, Workfront uses an assessment called Insights®. which helps evaluate different leadership personalities and their teams. With this assessment, the company can gauge qualities that various candidates offer. It allows management to assemble teams with true diversity of thought and offers each team member a new perspective and appreciation for their differences. It also helps keep the entire company balanced and allows individuals to hold a sense of pride in whatever it is they bring to their respective teams.
In closing
What advice might Butler give herself at 21 years old, about to embark on her career? “I’d say the adage, ‘success isn’t final, and failure isn’t fatal’ is true. Don’t be limited by negative thoughts. People will listen if you’ve done the work, speak with authenticity and go the extra mile. Put in the extra ten percent and surprise yourself. We have to believe in the limitless boundaries of our own potential before anyone else will.”
