It’s small things, like pushing in their chair after the interview or taking their coffee mug with them. Some subtle things that people do really make them stand out. They’re personable and hospitality-driven, and motivated by helping people. We feel comfortable in their company, they’re intuitive, and they adapt to situations well. We look for people who are inherently trustworthy. JR: What qualities are you looking for in someone that to you signifies that they’re trustworthy? How do you determine that? It’s important to talk about how the values are evolving over time. Culture needs to be flexible.Įvery new person who comes into our company is changing the culture. The problem is that there’s a kind of a dissonance between the words that you’re saying and what’s actually happening. MS: I don’t like it when people take a formulaic approach: “Write a mission statement and some values, put it on our website. JR: What is some typical advice that you hear about building company culture that you think should be ignored? We celebrate real actions and reinforce them, versus having a mission statement on the wall. We also have an award at the end of the week which we give to somebody who exhibited one of those values, and we tell their story. We have to live our values and share them. MS: I have a strong belief that putting our mission statement on the wall doesn’t do a lot. JR: It sounds like this notion of ‘one team’ is very strongly embedded into your company. That way, they can form relationships across the company and get context for what other people do. For example, all our corporate employees go out into the field as an Alfred for a few days. We also try to create a shared context of everyone’s job and how they fit into our greater mission. To create a sense of ‘being one team,’ we don’t think about our field staff differently than our corporate employees. We think a lot about how to scale our culture, since we’re fundamentally trying to build one of the most trusted companies in the world. Our culture is the glue, the foundation, and what keeps us in business. We also have a workforce in eight different locations. We’re an 80/20 split between full-time and part-time. Marcela Sapone: While the majority of our managers are full-time, we do have part- time workers. How do you make sure that people still feel like they belong to a team? Jillian Richardson: A lot of your employees are part time, and a lot of your staff are operating all over the city. How does Hello Alfred achieve such a delicate balance, and create a company that’s based on the foundation of trust? We sat down with Marcela to find out. This job is highly intimate, and requires hiring employees who have the ability to form relationships with their clients while also being unobtrusive. ![]() Hello Alfred recently raised $40 million in Series B funding. While this might not sound like a big deal, it is to people who are crunched for time–– and investors agree. ![]() Essentially, they hire home managers to tackle the small tasks that no one wants to deal with: grocery shopping, doing laundry, taking out the trash. Their company is dedicated to bringing hotel-style hospitality to more households. Sapone is the co-founder and CEO of Hello Alfred. Marcela Sapone knows a thing or two about hiring talented people and putting them to work. When it comes to buzzwords, the phrase “company culture” is up there with “hustle” and “wellness.”īut there’s a good reason for that-in a tight labor market, talented employees can afford to be choosey, and a great culture can be the difference maker when it comes to landing top employees.
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