BCM One
New York, NY
| Editor’s Summary:
BCM One is committed to creating an environment that champions accountability, innovation, and teamwork. With a central focus on “operationalizing” communication, the company goes beyond merely understanding employee satisfaction levels, instead actively working to enhance them. Promoting a positive work-life balance is central to the company’s ethos, encouraging employees to disconnect when necessary and embodying this through the actions of the leadership team. The organization takes pride in its diverse and inclusive workforce, believing in empowering employees to promote positive change and reach their full potential. Amidst opportunities for advancement and robust training programs, BCM One has initiated a performance management process centered on career development. The 8-week intensive project management training course enables employees to manage important company projects, providing real-world experience. Post-acquisition of eight companies since 2019, BCM One has maximized the integration process as a growth opportunity for employees across the organization. Furthermore, BCM One actively engages in community service and charitable causes, offers a flexible work model, and provides a variety of professional perks, emphasizing the importance of open communication and transparency about the company’s strategic direction and goals. |
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Intro: We are committed to creating an environment that fosters accountability, innovation, and teamwork. Many BCM One employees have been with the company for 10+ years, which we think says a lot about our culture. |
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Impact statements
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Advancement Opportunities:
The company just launched a new performance management process that focuses on career development. The performance review process is structured to foster productive conversations about development as well as concrete areas for improvement to reduce hurdles that may be impeding growth. Additionally, we have a structure in place for employees to work with their managers on at least one development goal at any given time, giving them access to resources and best practices to help them grow.
Additionally, the acquisition of eight companies since 2019 created an extraordinary amount of team integration activity. But the company also recognized that this offers a tremendous opportunity for employees, and has taken full advantage of this, providing employees from throughout the business—including the acquired entities—to participate in the integration process. This provides exposure, as well as growth opportunities, to more functions, teams, and leaders across the company.
Training Opportunities:
Because BCM One is a managed service provider, effective project management a core to our success. We launched a project management training course to build up project management capabilities. It’s an intensive 8-week class where an important company project is identified and employees are nominated to participate in the program to learn everything they need to know to kick off and manage the project. The program was launched during the pandemic and the first cohort was virtual. With the second cohort, we were able to bring the participants to HQ to present the project to the leadership team. This is not just a course in project management best practices or a lab with a theoretical project—it’s an experience that enables them to learn and do in the real world with an initiative that is important to the company and has visibility with senior leadership. Not only does this provide significantly more value to the employees involved in the program, but it transforms them into role models who can help train people and establish more project management skills and practices throughout the company.
Additionally, given the company’s fast growth through acquisition and the associated need to scale, employees have the opportunity to evaluate a variety of processes across multiple entities and build the best path forward. This provides the opportunity to both teach others and also to learn from the people around them.
Community service/charitable causes:
The BCM One Gives Back Program recognizes the sincere desire of BCM One clients, employees, partners, and leadership to lend ongoing support to a variety of charities as an extra benefit of working together as technology partners. The program supports various charities including the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Susan G. Komen Cure, Housing Works, St. Baldrick’s Foundation, Autism Speaks, Covenant House, Fred’s Team, and many more.
Measuring satisfaction:
BCM One’s primary focus is on “operationalizing” the communication that needs to happen to truly understand not just employee satisfaction levels but also what’s needed to improve those levels if necessary. It starts at the top, and our CEO holds regularly scheduled skip-level meetings. Leadership and management are encouraged to maintain open door policies. We meet with new hires 30 days in to get their feedback. Similarly, we meet with acquired companies’ employees to get their feedback on how the acquisition/integration is going. A portion of every all-company quarterly meeting is devoted to questions and open discussion. The fact that we always get a lot of questions during these sessions indicates that employees are comfortable asking questions and sharing feedback, which is critical no matter what the measurement approach is.
At BCM One, we understand that every employee is different, which means that there is no single ideal work environment. That’s why we offer a hybrid work model which focuses on enabling employees to work where they can work best. For employees who are more productive working remotely, we ensure they have the resources they need to get their jobs done and stay connected to their teams. For employees who prefer to work in an office, we provide them with very nice spaces. Our physical offices are located in prime areas and offer both collaborative areas as well as private workspaces.
Work/Life:
This starts from the top down. Many companies say they promote work/life balance, and may even have certain policies in writing, but it doesn’t happen in practice. Often this is because leadership doesn’t do a good job of (1) demonstrating what work/life balance looks like and (2) showing that it truly is OK. At BCM One, everyone is encouraged to disconnect and take time off, and this is modeled by the leadership team who is thoughtful about setting expectations that actually enable a work/life balance.
BCM One offers a competitive PTO policy that is inclusive of sick days, vacation, and personal days. In addition, the company has changed the paid holiday schedule to be more inclusive. The company still offers 10 paid holidays, but has increased the number of floaters to four because we want employees to have more flexibility to take days off to celebrate religious or cultural holidays, birthdays, employment anniversaries, etc. at their own discretion.
Perks:
BCM One offers a number of professional, workday, and lifestyle perks such as access to licenses for virtual training for technical certifications, occasionally bringing in food or treats for the office, and discounts to legal, financial, health and other experts and services
Fun:
We have an employee council that, in addition to supporting workplace initiatives, also plans and hosts a variety of activities that would fall more under the “fun” category. In addition to the trivia and entertainment events mentioned above, they also host “Data Bites” which are lunch-and-learns where team members to present topics that they’re passionate about, whether it’s business-related or a hobby. This enables us to celebrate employees for the things that matter most to them.
How corporate vision is communicated:
As mentioned previously, open communication is part of our culture and our DNA. We hold quarterly meetings where leadership talks openly about priorities and the work they’re doing. Our CRO has monthly calls with the sales team to discuss the details about sales, revenue, etc.—and the entire company is invited. Likewise, the product marketing team invites employees to its meetings about the product roadmap. These open invitations enable transparency about how the company is doing and where we’re headed. And our CEO meets with all employees at acquired companies when they come on board to share how they fit into the BCM One vision—and then he does the same for BCM One employees so they understand how the new company fits into the company’s overall strategy and daily operations.
Empowering employees:
Because we are a fast-growing company with a lot of change happening via acquisition, product development, and partner growth, every employee has the opportunity—and is encouraged—to share ideas and be part of process improvement. Employees are encouraged to have open conversations with managers and to speak up if they see something that could be improved. As mentioned previously, open communication is built into every level and across all functions of the organization to be part of our DNA. And because change is constant—change is, in fact, growth—empowering employees to promote positive change is a big part of the DNA.
The company has implemented a segment leadership structure to drive empowerment. Each segment—e-commerce (the Flowroute, SIP.US, and SIPTRUNK brands), retail (BCM One), and white-label (SkySwitch and CoreDial)—is run as its own business with its own budget with
guidance from the C-suite. This approach provides opportunities for more high performers to step up and be leaders, and gives them the support to help them succeed.
We offer an Employee of the Quarter program with a monetary award and Employee of the Year that includes a 7-day Caribbean vacation package, and we continually host regional team-building gatherings. And when we announce the winners, we also recognize all the nominees, because it’s important to acknowledge and show appreciation for everyone who fellow teammates have taken the time and effort to nominate. We also empower managers to give gift cards for spot recognition and we spotlight teams and wins in our employee newsletter.
Ensuring well-being:
We consciously strive to always provide a supportive environment. For employees who need additional help or support, we offer an employee assistance program (EAP) and have and Emergency Fund to help our team members going through difficult times.
Supporting morale and employee development during the pandemic was something that the company was very thoughtful about, particularly as we also acquired several companies during that time frame. We were mindful of the big shift—not to mention stress—that came from the sudden shift to work-from-home for BCM One employees. And for the employees of the acquired companies, there was an added layer of change as they were integrated. During this time, our CEO, Geoff Bloss, sent weekly communications to ensure everyone stayed in the know. Additionally, managers proactively worked with their teams to ensure that everyone knew what going on, what the expectations were, and what benefits were available to them. And our employee council planned and hosted a slew of virtual events to keep everyone connected and engaged. A couple of examples include a virtual escape room event for team-building, trivia events, and entertainment with a professional magician.
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Closing company statements: We’re committed to building and nurturing a diverse and inclusive workforce and environment that empowers employees to do their best work, spread their wings and reach their full potential. It’s also important to note that as a client-centric managed service provider, we don’t offer our clients cookie-cutter solutions, and this means that the work is always varied and interesting—the opportunities are truly endless. |
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