The tumult of 2020 has put many company cultures across the land to the test. How can a company culture – fostered by the daily camaraderie of a buzzing office – survive when the employees are forced to reconfigure into a remote workforce? The Lexington, Massachusetts-based IT security company Imprivata’s agile transition into a remote workforce has been a model of how such tests can strengthen a culture rooted in compassion and prosperity.
To get a clear picture of the particulars of Imprivata’s pivot, we talked to Kelliann McCabe, Chief People Officer for Imprivata. McCabe, an eight-year veteran of the company, has over twenty years of Human Resources Management experience under her belt. She recalls that she came onboard at Imprivata at the perfect moment.
“I joined the company at an interesting and fun stage. I was brought in before we were going public. Prior to that, I had been working in mature startups,” McCabe says. “I was able to have a lot of impact, define, and design a lot of the employee-oriented programs.”
This has served Imprivata incredibly well during the COVID-mandated transition to a fully remote workforce earlier this year.
McCabe’s HR journey has given her a front-row seat to the evolution of the idea of company culture as being central to a businesses’ values and reputation as a workplace. There were always companies, and there were always cultures, but the idea that employees should expect to be part of a healthy, caring environment at work rose to the fore almost parallel with McCabe’s path in HR Management.
“The cross-functional awareness and investment companies were making was just starting to become really important,” McCabe says of her earlier experience in HR Management. “And the recognition of the connection to culture in defining what you want and what is you stand for.”
McCabe has seen several startups she worked for go through the merger or acquisition process – including Imprivata’s own purchase by private equity – and argues convincingly that those processes can be enormously stressful to the individual cultures of the companies being acquired or otherwise coming together.
“It’s always a test of your culture,” McCabe says. “Whether I had been part of a company being acquired or part of the business doing the acquiring, the questions were always ‘Would there be a good cultural fit? Would there be good collegial back and forth? Or was it going to be challenging?'”
Major changes like that served in their own way to further prepare Imprivata’s culture for the nearly unthinkable coming shake-up that rocked the fundaments of how most Americans earn their living.
“When I joined Imprivata, the company was already very strong. We talked often about our three core values of passion, courage of your conviction, and integrity. And the culture here is that same culture that was in place when I started, we have just continued to invest and foster it,” McCabe says. “I think that’s a true testament to having a strong culture. Our culture survived the changes, and now we can be part of the change.”
Few businesses could have expected the changes that February 2020 would bring. Early that month, Imprivata’s management began communicating a message of travel restrictions, based on the growing threat of the COVID-19 virus worldwide.
“We wanted people to be informed, and we wanted people to be safe. And that has been one of the primary drivers of all of our decisions since the COVID crisis hit,” McCabe says. “‘Is it good for employees?’ ‘Are they going to be safe?’ And then ‘How do we as a business continue to move forward?'”
The company moved quickly despite the uncertainty inherent in the crisis. Employees were told to have their “go bags” ready containing any work essentials that would need to be transitioned to home in a switch to a fully remote situation.
“And within about ten days, we officially had decided to close the office,” McCabe says, adding that by early April, a decision was made to keep the offices closed through the end of 2020.
“Most of our employees do miss working with each other, and they miss that in-person connection. But I believe they’re happy that decisions were made so that they could get their personal lives more in order and do what they needed to do to support their families.”
McCabe says that the Imprivata team adapted to Zoom technology quickly, as they had begun working with the conferencing app prior to the crisis hitting. Surprisingly, the transition has led to several new blossoms on the culture rather than any kind of lessening of team spirit.
“We have always prioritized engagement, but Zoom really enabled us to connect with our broader employee base in a much more regular and effective way,” she says, adding that the company needed to get very creative when coming up with employee engagement events that would hum with the same team spirit as in-office Imprivata’s culture-strengthening events had been.
“Now we do a comprehensive work from home newsletter, full of tips on being successful working in that remote environment. We’re hitting our ninth issue, and it’s not just for the employees, but for their family,” McCabe says. “We also have had employees do live workout videos for each other to help foster positive wellbeing. And we have a whole series of things we’re planning for the fall and into the winter season which are more holiday-oriented.”
The move to a virtual workplace has also affected – and enhanced – the company’s recruiting efforts. While the company has always recruited globally, Imprivata leadership no longer feels the need to have certain roles be tied to their Lexington, Massachusetts, headquarters.
“We’re pretty open to a broader geographic recruitment base, and hopefully that will allow us to not only recruit diverse talent from all over the country but also to complement and bring that diversity into Imprivata,” McCabe says. “We really see the positives for everyone in more diversity. We’re really looking forward to bringing that diversity into the company through our recruiting efforts.”
McCabe says while she’s proud of Imprivata’s D&I programs, she also says those policies always have room for reexamination and improvement.
“We really feel we’re at a pivotal point now where we can engage more broadly across the company,” she says. With the society-changing events of 2020, many companies are looking for the first time at serious Diversity & Inclusion initiatives, Imprivata already has several programs and partnerships in place in Boston to take advantage of local diversity in unique ways.
Among Imprivata’s initiatives directed towards broadening inclusion & diversity:
- They work with Boston-based group Hack.Diversity, which allows the company to support Black and Latinx interns from different areas and walks of life who are pursuing careers in tech, providing them with training, coaching, and mentoring throughout their experience.
- Imprivata also works with BUILD Boston, which gives employees the opportunity to spend time mentoring students in under-resourced communities in the Boston area. The BUILD program uses entrepreneurship to motivate students towards high school, college & career success.
- The company partners with the Perkins School for the Blind on an initiative to support and prepare visually impaired students for the workforce. “We were able to host one of their first graduates of the program last year, and she stayed with us on the Customer Support Team through the time we transitioned to work from home, which was a great experience for us and we know for her too,” McCabe says.
Summarizing her philosophy on company culture, gleaned from her substantial experience, McCabe points to transparency as the most important element of a healthy workplace.
“Be honest, be genuine. People will appreciate that even if you have to deliver tough news. If you’re honest and you make informed decisions and are transparent about those decisions, that’s the best way to foster a positive culture,” she says. “We stay on top of that, we stay connected, and we’re all still engaged in our company culture. We just all happen to be working from home right now.”
Imprivata participated in Comparably’s annual survey and awards program for the first time this year. McCabe said, “We made a decision to join the program as we were very interested in understanding how our employees are feeling and we didn’t have an option do the in-person check-ins or walk the hallways as we would normally do. We also wanted to hear how our employees were feeling about the decisions we have made this year and how we have collectively navigated COVID and workspace challenges. It has been refreshing to see such positive feedback, knowing that 2020 has not been an easy one.”
Imprivata has received 6 Comparably awards through Q2 and Q3, including most recently ranked #1 in Employee Happiness. McCabe commented, “We are honored to receive this award, as it speaks to how making timely decisions coupled with employee empowerment and trust has enabled our employees to be successful and happy while working from home.”
Recently Imprivata made the decision to extend its global office closure through June 2021. McCabe said, “We know this is the right decision for our teams, we are proud of how resilient our employees have been this year, and the strength of our culture continues to keep us connected.”
While it’s impossible to be completely prepared for any of the twists and turns coming our way in the years ahead on the road of society, culture, and the workplace, but it’s no exaggeration to say that – with great leadership like McCabe in place – Imprivata’s culture is as agile and compassionate as the modern world demands.