Company: Valimail, Boulder, CO
Company Description: Valimail is the global leader in zero-trust email authentication security. We invented hosted DMARC in 2015 and DMARC-as-a-service in 2021. Our cloud-native solutions authenticate sender identity to stop phishing, protect brands, and ensure compliance. The only FedRAMP certified DMARC solution, we hold the most robust portfolio of patents that unlock DMARC for businesses at scale.
Nomination Category: Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Achievement in Promoting Work-Life Balance
 Nomination Title: Valimail, Champion of Work-Life Balance
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes, explaining the nominated achievements since July 1 of last year, OR written answers to the questions? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video. If you are submitting written answers to the questions, provide them in the appropriate spaces below:
- Briefly describe the nominated organization: history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Total 200 words used.
Valimail is the global leader in zero-trust email authentication security. We invented hosted DMARC in 2015 and DMARC-as-a-service in 2021. Our cloud-native solutions authenticate sender identity to stop phishing, protect brands, and ensure compliance.
Three years ago, in spite of exceptional products, our business was not growing. Employee sentiments were low. Our Glassdoor rating was 2.8 and our eNPS score was -7. Our retention rate was only 30%. Low employee productivity, burnout, and high turnover were costing us close to half a million dollars a year. Our solution was to transform the company culture to prioritize work-life balance to become a high-performing business.
At the onset of the pandemic, Valimail pivoted from our San Francisco HQ to fully remote to expand our talent pool and laid the groundwork in our business policy, process, and structure to turn Valimail into an outcomes-driven business. Today we emphasize the skills, values, and behaviors that enable asynchronous collaboration to achieve business outcomes.
Our culture collaborates across time zones. We offer 8 weeks of paid maternity leave and 4 weeks of paid paternity leave. Finally, we offer a flexible PTO policy which encourages employees to take the time they need when they need it.
- Outline the organization's achievements since the beginning of last year that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
Total 249 words used.
Valimail has implemented these key projects below to ensure that work-life balance isn’t just advertised but fully experienced by all employees:
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Refreshed Employer Brand. We clarified expectations on employee conduct to maintain a culture that doesn’t glorify exhaustion and instead encourages healthy boundaries. We refreshed our company values and employer brand to capture the heart and ambition of our business. Work-life balance was explicitly built into two out of our four core values of Be Trustworthy and Be Inclusive.
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Employee-Centric Events. Our employees are people first and when we experience one another through that lens, the way we work together will be more collaborative, supportive, and considerate. We produced the company’s first ever All Org Retreat and we spent three days together to team build and mingle. Additionally, we launched two monthly virtual events, the Mini MBA lecture hall and the casual Company Social, to bring our remote workforce together.
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Values to Performance. We translated our values into actionable and measurable behaviors to hold all employees accountable to putting our values into practice. We released a performance evaluation model that equally weights behaviors and outcomes. Performance evaluations are directly tied to compensation to drive home the mandatory nature of values-aligned behaviors.
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Ethics Council. We formed an employee-run governing body, the We x Be Council, that holds all employees accountable for ethical business practices which includes diversity, equity, and inclusion. This Council has implemented the company's first anonymous employee feedback system to collect and recommend action on employee feedback year-round.
- Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the organization's past performance (up to 250 words):
Total 243 words used.
Our achievement in work-life balance is the result of our intentional strategic design to steadily grow our business year over year. This decision has boosted employee sentiments as shown today in our eNPS score of +56 and 4.4 Glassdoor rating. Our cost per employee has decreased by 20% YoY, we’ve doubled our revenue per employee, and our retention rate has gone from 30% to 90%.
While work-life balance is often discussed as a perk or benefit that rewards employees, here at Valimail, work-life balance is a strategic decision because we understand that it optimizes employee productivity. To us, a business that recognizes how to get the most out of their teams would implement work-life balance as a business requirement.
While work-life balance as a catchphrase is easy enough to publish in marketing materials, successful implementation demands executive buy-in and all-org pull-through. At Valimail, we thoughtfully designed our employer brand refresh, employee-centric events, values translation into performance evaluation, and an ethics council to orchestrate clear employee expectations, leadership accountability, and connection to business performance at every level of the business.
To us, our employees perform because of work-life balance. We take vacation time very seriously and we’ve created the culture, policy, process, and structure to allow employees to take the time they need, when they need it. This means that the policy is backed up by clear expectations for managers to help their teams balance the business’ needs with their teams’ individual needs.
- Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 87 words used.
Policies:
Employer Brand & Values:
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Employer brand deck shows the process and outcome of our values refresh.
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Values to Behaviors translation that turned our employer brand values into actionable and measurable behaviors expected of all employees
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We x Be Council (our Ethics Council) charter and vision
Survey Results:
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All Org Retreat survey results
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Mini MBA curriculum and survey results
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Employee engagement survey results from Q2 and Q4 FY23
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