Organization
Brex
Category
Financial Services
Percent of team members who felt Welcome was a better experience than Zoom
98%
Attendees
500+
Percent of team members who felt more connected to the company and their teams
85%
June Sauvaget
—
Chief Marketing Officer
From humble beginnings as a startup credit card, Brex has evolved into an all-in-one finance solution for business. Household names like AirBnB, Y Combinator, and Classpass all depend on Brex’s services for their business spend needs. The company has recently seen huge growth, acquiring thousands of new customers each month and raising the kind of capital that sends TechCrunch reporters into a tizzy.
The company made the commitment to go permanently remote last year, and even as soaring vaccination rates dangle the possibility of returning to “normal,” that commitment hasn’t wavered. “The world has changed. And it’s not going back to where it was in the past,” says June Sauvaget, Chief Marketing Officer at Brex. “The challenge that we have is how do you grow a team and maintain a culture as a fully remote company?”
Brex is in a hypergrowth phase, with 40-50 new employees onboarding each week. This poses a unique challenge for the company's small internal comms team. “We’re a growing company, but we're still very small,” she says. “We need to keep everyone engaged to make sure that the culture remains intact. We do that through our company all-hands meetings.”
Until recently, those all-hands happened in a standard video conferencing app. “It was fine,” says June. “But it didn’t feel special. Everyone was going from back-to-back video meetings into an all-hands that didn’t look any different.” She felt worried about losing the team’s attention. “If you're asking someone to log into just another video call throughout their day, they will probably spend that time multitasking and doing other things.” But as a remote company, time for connection as a team is at a premium. She wanted everyone to be fully engaged.
"[Our previous solution] was fine, but it didn’t feel special. Everyone was going from back-to-back video meetings into an all-hands that didn’t look any different."
They needed a platform that would make the experience feel distinct from their everyday—a platform that would get the team energized around their mission and feel like they were a part of something bigger than themselves. A platform like Welcome.
June and the Brex team felt immediately drawn to Welcome—but June was also hesitant. “We wanted to get the most out of Welcome, but to do that we needed more people.” With the support of a Welcome event producer and an external designer, adopting the platform became a lot more feasible. Then, they could start to think about how to make the most of the platform to serve their goals.
“For us, it all starts with the content,” says June. “We look at it like we’re producing a full press conference every other week.” (On off weeks, they do a live Q&A session). “We have guest speakers, announcements, demos, deep dives into exciting projects—we want to make sure that the entire company understands what we’re doing and is on the same page.” Brex takes this a step further by starting every all-hands meeting by reviewing their company mission and values. It’s a poignant reminder of what they’re working to create together.
But great content can only take you so far. As communications theorist Marshall McLuhan would put it, the medium is the message. So what message is Welcome allowing the Brex team to send?
The reactions to the new platform were incredibly positive. So much so, that many of the team members didn’t believe their eyes. “The first time we did this, it just blew people's minds,” says June. “They didn't believe it was live. They were saying, ‘you guys taped it ahead of time.’”
Compared to how they used to run all-hands, it’s night and day. “What we used to do, is produce a deck and run through it over video,” she says. “And while the content can be great, the experience is just not as compelling. Welcome just breathed fresh air into the all-hands experience. It looks so professional—like a high def television broadcast. The video and the music that plays at the beginning is really compelling. The overlays look amazing. The chat feature is great and the team loves that.”
“Since incorporating Welcome into our all-hands meetings, our employee satisfaction surveys have shown that 85% of our employees feel more connected with the company and each other. We’re thrilled to see such amazing results!
Not only does Welcome make their all-hands look amazing, but it’s incredibly intuitive to use. Case in point: Approximately three minutes before the team’s first all-hands meeting (and that’s not an exaggeration) Brex’s CEO decided he wanted to take over running the show. June and her event producer just looked at each other and said, okay. “He was great—he just picked it up incredibly quickly,” says June. Although Brex’s CEO is admittedly a tech wizard, the ease at which he was able to navigate the platform demonstrates just how simple it is to use.
Even with these initial successes, June wants to keep pushing the envelope with Welcome. “I think we've just really scratched the surface,” she says. “We want to continue to use it to the full capacity we can—whether that means we start doing polls, hosting our Q&A sessions on Welcome, or using it for sales training. There are a lot of possibilities.”
In the meantime, she’s hyper-focused on the message she wants their all-hands meetings to send to Brex’s growing team. “You have to lead with content and make that incredibly compelling, but then also present that content in a compelling way,” she says. “That’s what Welcome allows us to do.”
Engaging your team is tough, especially in a remote reality. Employees are battling boredom, detachment, and burnout—and lame company meetings don’t help. Want to create jaw-dropping all-hands meetings your employees will love? See all the ways you can use Welcome to host company-wide meetings your team won't want to miss.
Create jaw-dropping company-wide events your employees love. Start leveraging Welcome to build a phenomenal culture.
