I’m excited and proud to announce that Iron Horse is officially certified as a Great Place to Work! *cue confetti*
What does this mean?
In short, we’ve proven that we have a genuinely great company culture, based on anonymous survey feedback from our employees.
We’ve always thought we had a great culture, but we were blown away when we saw some of the results from the survey. Such as:
- 100% say people here are willing to give extra to get the job done.
- 100% say people care about each other here.
- 100% say they are treated as a full member here, regardless of position.
This achievement is one I’m especially proud of as a member of our Iron Horse Culture Committee, a group of seven cross-functional employees who dedicate their time to creating programs to strengthen and promote said culture. Being a majority-remote company, we’ve been working hard to ensure our workforce feels included, connected, and engaged.
Here are some of my favorite initiatives that I believe contributed to our recognition as a Great Place to Work.
Level Up program.
Our take on a lunch-and-learn, this bi-weekly education series is led by our employees, for our employees. At Iron Horse, we are passionate about learning and strive to get 1% better every day. This program is how we facilitate this. Level Up sessions can be about personal or professional topics. Recent ones have included The ABCs of B2B Marketing, What’s New in GA4, Dungeons and Dragons, and How to Run an Etsy Shop Side Hustle.
Bonus: We start out each session with a few icebreaker polls (because we really want to know if you’d rather live the rest of your life in the Arctic or the Desert), then go into shoutouts. These two additions aim to create a sense of camaraderie and celebrate our wins. We want to ensure everyone’s achievements get recognized, no matter how small.
Quarterly social activities.
Part of the fun of being on the Culture Committee is coming up with creative ways to connect virtually, avoiding the dreaded “happy hour” with those awkward silences (you know the ones I’m talking about). Instead, we get our employees to connect, learn, and grow through unique, interactive activities. These have included painting classes, truffle-making courses, Drag Queen bingo, and a virtual escape room. We want everyone to have a voice so we can choose activities that our people really want to participate in. Employees vote on social activities during our monthly meetings or via Slack, and anyone can offer suggestions for upcoming activities.
Bonus: Any activity where we can break up into small groups and get team members interacting with those they don’t usually work with is a win in our book. Additionally, anything promoting our core values of diversity, equity, and inclusion is extremely important to us.
I love how Iron Horse doesn’t pressure people to participate more than they’re comfortable but always has something for everyone. You like plants? They’ve got a plant-based interest group. Creative hands? We did a guided painting class. A hot take on webinars? Talk about it in our bi-monthly Level Up presentations.
Kat Andersson
Internal newsletter.
Ever been at a company where you feel like you have no idea what’s going on outside your department? It’s incredibly isolating and makes you feel like you’re not important enough to be kept in the loop. We never want our employees to feel that way, so we instituted a quarterly internal newsletter to keep us all up to speed on the latest and greatest.
Bonus: Modules like “6 things you didn’t know about so-and-so” and an Instagram-like photo collage provide a window into the people behind the computer screen.
The Iron Horse insight.
Our culture is something we’re extremely proud of, and is something that we are always working to strengthen, make better, and just plain get right. I believe this strong culture comes across in our client relationships, as we strive to be an extension of their team as well. It’s a major reason why companies decide to work with us. I may be biased, but I think we have some of the best people in the industry here at Iron Horse. And I’m so happy that it’s getting recognized.
p.s. Here’s a word cloud with themes that came up time and time again in the responses. In case I haven’t hit this point home enough, our people are our greatest asset.
