Fibernetics
Cambridge, ON Canada
| Editor’s Summary:
Fibernetics, an innovative tech company is a great place for employees who are willing to expand their skills, knowledge, and work creatively. The company offers a plethora of tangible and intangible benefits, ranging from a generous PTO package to a collaborative and empowering work environment. Fibernetics heavily focuses on continuous learning, skill development, and growth opportunities for its staff through internal and external training opportunities. Community service and philanthropy are integral parts of the company’s culture, with support extended to both local and global charities. Work-life balance is emphasized through flexible work timings, hybrid work models, and significant paid days off. The company also provides various perks, including free coffee, on-site gyms, catered lunches, and discount programs. Employees at Fibernetics are empowered to make decisions and are given the autonomy to handle their tasks. The company ensures the well-being of its staff through several measures, including ergonomic workspace setups, mental health support, and access to gyms. In summary, Fibernetics is dedicated to maintaining a work culture that promotes empowerment, innovation, personal growth, and work-life balance. |
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Intro: Top candidates should join our team because they get awesome intangible and tangible benefits. Some of the intangible benefits are the space and freedom to be creative, to try new things, and to learn about new technologies in an industry many people don’t look too deeply into. As well, they would be working in an environment of trust, communication, collaboration, and empowerment. Employees are treated like humans not just cogs in a wheel. Our tangible benefits include a generous PTO package, in-office gyms, free coffee, free parking, remote or hybrid working model, a modern and inviting office, and market competitive compensation packages. |
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Impact statements
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Advancement Opportunities:
At Fibernetics we provide advancement and opportunities to grow in a number of ways. We will be outlining two for the purposes of this application.
To begin, we rotate employee’s roles and do cross training. For example our accounts payable and accounts receivable areas of our finance department. The staff in these areas rotate roles and job duties to cross-train, but also to give our employees the opportunity to learn. They appreciate this opportunity to grow their skills and learn more. It also positions them for advancement into more senior positions where they will be responsible for larger projects or multiple functions within the department.
Another way we provide advancement is by giving our employees stretch projects. Management collaborates with employees to assign projects that bring the employee just outside of their comfort zone and grow their skills and abilities. We want them to be able to build on their skills and see that they are capable of great things. They are never left to fend for themselves while working on these projects. Management and their co-workers are there to help and support our employees with questions or advice on what to do next. For example, in our technology department, a systems specialist was consulted about what the next project they wanted to work on. The employee and manager agreed on a project that was needed to automate server error reports. The employee learned a new program we were using for this automation and then was assigned the task of creating and testing the automation on different servers. They had the support of management and their co-workers along with basic instructions of the program and helpful forums that other specialists used when they need advice from outside the company. The employee did a great job with the automation and learned they have a strength in creating automations using this new program for many other processes our systems department needs. Through providing role rotation, cross training, and consulting employees on stretch projects, our employees receive the opportunity to develop their skills, learn more about their strengths and weaknesses, and to explore their department to see what areas they enjoy working in.
Training Opportunities:
Our goal with our training opportunities is to help our employees improve their skillsets and to continue learning. We want our employees to succeed and grow within our company and we will support them whether it be through sending them to seminars or programs where they can learn from industry experts, hosting internal training sessions, like our product training or bringing in external support to give employees individual support.
We want to provide our staff with opportunities to continue learning and to help grow their skillset. We offer internal training opportunities as well as enable our staff to take part in external training experiences.
Some of the external training experiences include job/industry specific seminars, talks, and programs. We pay the enrollment cost on behalf of our staff so they can participate because we know these programs and experiences offer our staff the opportunity to learn from experts and bring the new knowledge into their work. In 2022, our HR Manager participated in an HR Law seminar where she got to listen to industry professionals and collaborate in focus groups about real life examples
Another example is our IT specialist who attended an online program that Fibernetics fully funded to help him grow his skill set in the MAC operating system. Internally, one of our staff’s favorite training opportunities is our training on our Intellectual Property. Fibernetics has many technically complex product offerings in our residential brand, commercial brand, and wholesale brand. Each brand sells telecommunication products that accomplish the same goal, allowing people to communicate, but the products use different technologies and techniques to accomplish this. Therefore, we periodically offer the opportunity to non-product-facing staff to learn more about our products and how they work. These product overviews and trainings are highly valued by our employees because they deepen the knowledge of what our company does. They find this information very helpful when they are trying to build connections to their coworkers in other departments and to speak intelligently about it when someone in their personal life asks.
The last training opportunity we wish to highlight is that we bring in experts to help specific individual employees or groups of employees in our organization. In 2021 and into 2022 we hired a communication coach to help two managers with their communication styles. They needed some support for different areas of their communication technique, and we were happy to help. For these two managers they each had sessions with the communication coach to develop individual plans and goals. For one of the managers, the coaching centered around professionalism and for the other, who was a new manager, the sessions focused on how to communicate with their reports. These sessions helped our managers to improve and build on their job-specific talents with additional people-specific skills. We were happy to get them the support and training they desired to improve at their work.
Community service/charitable causes:
At Fibernetics we take community service and charity seriously. We support various charities in our community and globally.
To begin, when the war between Russia and Ukraine started, we offered free long distance calling to Ukraine so that Canadians were able to contact their loved ones without the financial strain of paying the long-distance service charges.
Next, we donate our products and services to various charities in Southwestern Ontario. We donate phone packages to the following charities and community initiatives: Durham Rape Crisis Centre, Catholic Family Services of Durham, the Barrie Jazz and Blues Festival, Habitat for Humanity Ontario in Bracebridge, and Food4Kids in Waterloo.
In addition to donating products and services we make financial donations to charities worldwide, mainly focusing on children. In 2022, we donated $19,750 to Assurance of Hope Children’s Home in Ghana. This has helped to supply a village and an orphanage in Ghana with the tools, food and clothing they need to help the children grow up strong and capable. Some of this money went to buying computers for the orphanage so that they could continue to learn and grow their skills for a brighter tomorrow. Locally, we have donated $16,365 to a charity called Food4kids. This charity prepares meal packages for children who don’t have access to food on the weekends or on school breaks.
We have donated a total of $12,000 in monthly donations and have matched the donations of our employees in our December fundraiser which totaled $4,365. We also want to support our employees’ families and interests. Therefore, we have sponsored sports teams that our employee’s children and grandchildren are a part of. We have donated just under $700 in total to two different sports teams in 2022 – a girl’s ringete team and a boys soccer team. We have also helped our employees in their fundraising efforts for organizations or initiatives they hold near and dear. We have matched a fundraising effort to the local humane society in the sum of $400 and have also sponsored employees who go on charity walks for cancer and guide dogs.
We also make financial donations to social entrepreneurships and charities our employees have created with our support. One of our employees started a company that sells coffee beans and donates the proceeds to the Food4Kids charity (mentioned above). We have switched to buying all our coffee from this social company so we can have our money work triple duty – a perk of free coffee for our employees, supporting an employee’s initiative and supporting an amazing charity. In 2022, we bought approximately $1,200 in coffee to support our employee and to indirectly give more money to Food4Kids. Another employee led charitable effort we support is called Backpacks for Kids. This charity is run in the Dominican Republic where we have a call centre. We raise and donate money to this charity so that kids in the Dominican Republic can go to school with all the school essentials they need. In 2022 we donated $8,160 and sent 163 students to school. We don’t stop with just donating products and money to different charities.
We also give each and every employee 2 paid days to volunteer in their community. We value giving back to our community and encourage our staff to do so. In previous years, many employees have said that they would love to volunteer but could not afford to sacrifice some of their income. Therefore, these two paid days give our employees the opportunity to give back. We don’t restrict this plan for people to only volunteer with registered charities, we have opened it up to include volunteering at a child’s school, helping in a neighborhood clean up, donating time to bake cookies for the elderly, etc. The little charitable efforts count just as much as the efforts of large, organized charities.
Measuring satisfaction:
We have found anonymous surveys are what our employees prefer so we run an employee survey at least once every year. Most years, we have run one very detailed survey, and one pulse survey, which is less detailed but touches on the main engagement and satisfaction questions. We feel it is important to gather ongoing information from our employees to get a snapshot of our staff’s job and work environment satisfaction, what areas we, as a company, can improve, and what aspects we, as a company, are doing well. The detailed survey offers our employees the chance to share their thoughts, feelings, and feedback so we can improve the workplace for all. We aim for at least 75%-80% of our staff to answer the survey before we close it to start analytics. We want to ensure we are capturing a large portion of our staffs’ opinions so that we aren’t inadvertently catering to a minority of our staff. This survey has allowed us to put money and effort towards items our employees find valuable like having a gym at each of our two office locations, the availability of career development opportunities external to the organization, and an annual holiday bonus that is independent of company’s performance and is more geared towards helping with increased expenses that many people experience around the holiday times.
The physical environment in our offices have been designed to promote a good working environment and to encourage collaboration. We have capitalized on all the natural light in our offices and ensured our layout maximizes this benefit for our employees. Many employees enjoy having their desks next to the window, but don’t like having the light directly in their eyes or on their screens so we have put in special window shades that the employees can control. At our Waterloo location we have put a lounge area right by the windows – with the same special window shades. This area has a couch and some tables and chairs to allow our staff to have a place to relax in or to work out of if they want a change of environment and don’t want to work at their desks. At our Cambridge location, we have an open concept office with desks grouped together to allow for easier collaboration and communication within teams. We also have break out areas that people can use to have meetings or working sessions with people who don’t work near them. Many of our staff even sit at these break out areas if they need a different environment to work in for certain projects or want a break and to scroll on their phones.
Work/Life:
Fibernetics actively promotes work/life balance and encourages our staff to take advantage of all the programs and supports we offer.
Our vacation policy goes above and beyond Canada’s standard of 2-week minimum. The reason we give a minimum of 3 weeks when an employee starts is because we understand that everyone needs time off work to disconnect and relax. Two weeks go by fast, especially if you take a few long weekends or a week off. We felt it wasn’t enough time for our staff to get the rest and recovery they need in a year. Therefore, we offer a minimum of three weeks and the longer someone works for our company the more vacation days they receive. They will receive one additional week off (5 days) at their 5th, 10th, and 20th anniversary for a maximum of 6 weeks off. We allow employees to carry over their vacation over into the next year, but we do encourage them to use all their vacation leave in the year it was allocated because we want them to take the time to rest and recharge. We have a policy here at Fibernetics that employees cannot take off more than 2 weeks at a time. This is to ensure that their department and fellow coworkers are not overworked or stressed with having to cover that employee’s workload for extended periods of time. We do understand that sometimes an employee needs to take off longer than 2 weeks at a time for various reasons like caretaking, family celebration, religious reasons, etc. Therefore, we let employees know that they can come to us to see if we are able to accommodate a longer time off. For example, an employee of ours went overseas to take care of their ailing grandparent for a month. We understand that these precious moments with family are important therefore we worked with the employee and their manager to make adjustments in the department to safeguard the team’s efforts. This allowed the employee to take the whole month off.
At Fibernetics, we front load our employees’ PTO once they have completed their probationary period, except for medical leave which is accrued monthly – in accordance with government legislation. We have six different PTO plans that give our employees a minimum of 24 paid days and up to a maximum of 49 paid days off from work per year. These plans include a minimum of 15 days for vacation leave, 5 days for personal leave, 2 days for volunteering, our employee’s birthday off (1 day), the afternoon of Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve off (1 day), and up to 10 days for medical leave.
To begin, we offer flex-time for our employees which allows them to flex their workday for better work/life balance. Employees can choose when they start and end their workday as long as they work a total of 40 hours a week and are present for our core hours of 10 am to 4pm. They also have the flexibility to take some time off, even during our core business hours, and can make up the hours earlier or later in the week. This gives them the ability to pick up school-aged children, attend appointments, or run an errand that must be done during the workday without having to use vacation or personal leave.
Next, we have adopted a hybrid work model for the majority of our employees so that they can work from home to allow for better work/life balance. This helps to cut down on their commute time so they can be more present at home and/or be able to have more free time.
Furthermore, we offer our employees minimum of 24 paid days off and up to a maximum of 49 paid days off work per year. We give a minimum of 3 weeks up to a maximum of 6 weeks off for vacation, 5 days off for personal leave, 2 days off to volunteer, their birthday off, up to 10 days off for medical leave, and the afternoon of Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve off. We encourage our employees to take this time off to rest and recharge so that they can have a good work/life balance.
Lastly, our leadership team respects when employees are off on vacation or are on lunch/coffee/smoke/etc. breaks from work. Our leadership wants our employees to safeguard their time off and only work extra hours if they flex their time to ensure they don’t overwork themselves. All these programs and actions are taken to ensure our employees can have a good work/life balance for themselves. We actively promote and remind our staff of the programs that are available to them, and we accommodate wherever we can.
Perks:
We have many perks for our employees. Some of our special perks available revolving around food and exercise:
- These include free coffee at both locations, spontaneous free catered lunches and snacks, two on premise gyms open 24/7, and after-hours social events that includes activities, food and drinks.
- Other perks revolve around time off and free products. Every employee gets 2 days paid volunteer leave where they can donate their time to the cause of their choice.
- As well, any employees within our residential brand’s serviceable area are eligible for 100% free home phone and internet service.
- The last special perk we wish to highlight is our discount program with Allstate insurance, where Fibernetics employees get a discount on their home and auto insurance through a special program code.
Fun:
During the day our employees can partake in a game of ping pong to take a break and connect with their coworkers. They can also get free coffee at both of our locations and take a seat in comfortable break out areas to relax or to have a chat. Some teams like to use the kitchen in our locations to cook together and make a team lunch. A recent department lunch has been when our support team made pancakes and they decorated them with whip cream and berries.
At our Waterloo location our staff has the ability to go have an after-hours drink at the onsite fully licensed brewery. The brewery has pinball games to play, an outdoor area with horseshoes, and a patio to sit on and enjoy the view of the pond on our property.
By our Cambridge location there are a lot of nature trails, paved pathways by the river, and local eateries that our staff frequent every day. Multiple staff members go on walks in the area to clear their head and there is talk about starting a walking group.
How corporate vision is communicated:
Our corporate vision is communicated to our team in two main ways. Firstly, we talk about our corporate vision during our onboarding process. We have a welcome presentation where we outline our history, culture, values, and talk about our mission, vision, and goals for our organization. This helps our new hires know what we stand for and what we are working towards every day. The second way we communicate our corporate vision to our team is through our virtual company-wide huddle. We regularly talk about where our company is going and how any new developments or projects contribute to our corporate vision. This helps our employees ensure they are aligned and are moving together towards our corporate vision.
Empowering employees:
Fibernetics empowers employees to make decisions in multiple ways. To start, we give our employees autonomy over their work and set clear expectations on what their role encompasses and what we expect from them. This gives our employees security that allows them the freedom to make decisions about their work and how they wish to accomplish the tasks given to them.
Another way we empower employees to make decisions is to give them the resources they need to make informed decisions. Many employees want to make sure they have all the information before making a decision, therefore, we provide them with the resources and time to collect all the information they need. Many employees use the internet, historical documentation, current company knowledge documents like how-to-docs and their co-workers’ knowledge to collect information. Having these resources, the space, and implicit permission to explore the information gives employees more autonomy and increases their confidence level.
We also provide them with training and coaching when they first start their job and throughout their time here at Fibernetics. We support employees through the decision-making process by encouraging and guiding them regarding different types of things to consider before coming to a decision. Practice makes perfect and after a few rounds of coaching they feel more confident to make decisions on their own moving forward. In conjunction with coaching and training, we give our employees immediate positive and constructive feedback to help them with their decision making in the future. We give them immediate feedback because the thought process and reasons behind the decision are still fresh in their mind. This allows them to easily see what they did right or what needs to be altered for the next time they make a similar decision.
We encourage our employees to affect change in our company every day. One of our core values is innovation and we don’t limit this to technology or product development. Some of the most impactful and positive changes we have had in our business have come from making changes to processes.
We encourage our employees to be innovative and to come forward with their ideas and suggestions. Management and co-workers help employees implement their ideas when it is gainful for our company. An example of this is in our human resources department. We had a list of onboarding tasks that needed to be completed for every new hire, and human resources would make a new document for each employee. This worked reasonably well when only one new hire started with the company on a given date. However when we had multiple new hires starting in the same time period, all on different days, it created some chaos in the company. The chaos stemmed from the coordination of multiple departments to get the new employee’s equipment, access permissions, and programs set up in time. To limit the chaos, the human resources coordinator came up with an idea of creating an excel sheet so that all the new hires checklists were in one place and could easily be managed. When they approached leadership, the idea was implemented right away. This cut the chaos and manual effort down considerably during times when multiple new hires were starting. It made the process more streamlined and took less time for each department to complete their task. But innovation isn’t always easy and straight forward, it takes making a few mistakes to get the results we want.
We have developed an environment, from the top down, of innovation, collaboration, and trust. Our employees aren’t scared to bring their ideas to management or other departments. If they make a mistake or the idea doesn’t work, employees aren’t penalized. They are encouraged to try another way and to learn from their mistakes. Managers are open and vocal about this approach to the employees, so that this lack of penalty is explicitly stated, and there are no assumptions or fears about the opposite. . This environment allows for innovation and freedom which encourages our employees to affect change in our organization no matter the magnitude of the change.
We want to recognize our employees for all their hard work and achievements. The biggest way we internally recognize our employees is during our end of year award ceremony. We have two types of awards: employee-selected, and leadership-selected. The employee-selected awards are our six core value awards. We have an award for each one of our values – trust, accountability, just do it and find a solution, happiness, innovation, and teamwork. The winner of each award is someone who our staff feels embodies this value every day. Our leadership-selected award is called our Essential Piece of the Puzzle award. This award goes to an employee who has consistently gone above and beyond during the year and was instrumental to a project that had a big impact for our company. Our Chief of Staff shares a speech about each employee who wins an award that night and they are given a certificate/plaque that they can take home or display on their desk to remember that our company holds them in very high regard.
Another way we internally recognize our employees is during our virtual company-wide huddles. We have a few sections where we recognize our amazing staff:
- Firstly, we have a section where we highlight employees who have gone above and beyond in their role or have done an amazing job. Some notable highlights have been employees who have made unique contributions to new developments, customer service employees who have done a stellar job, and employees who have made a large impact in their department.
- The other section we recognize our staff is during our anniversary segment. We announce milestone anniversaries for 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, and 20 years. These are accompanied with a recent photo of the employee and a paragraph of praise and acknowledgement from the employee’s manager which outlines all the hard work and notable achievements the employee has done during their time with us. We are casual and informal about the type of photos we have employees choose to share, giving them freedom to choose anything that is close to their heart or brings them joy. We have had employees share photos with family, pets, experiences from memorable trips or special occasions. We don’t stop with only milestone anniversaries, but also acknowledge every employee’s annual anniversary which falls in between the ‘milestone’ anniversaries mentioned earlier. Examples are a 2-year anniversary, 4-year anniversary, or even an 18-year anniversary. We do this because we want to celebrate our staff and thank them for their dedication to our company. The way we externally recognize our staff is through LinkedIn. We make posts on our LinkedIn page about our employees’ milestone anniversaries, great successes, and if they have won any of our company awards. We want to recognize and brag about our employees so everyone knows about these amazing people.
All these methods empower our employees because they gain confidence in their ability to make effective decisions.
Ensuring well-being:
We care about our employees and take many measures to help employees with their overall well-being. In terms of supporting our staff’s physical health we will start with our free gym (at both of our locations). Our gyms are open 24/7 to our employees so they can get a workout in before, during or after work and don’t need to pay for a gym membership. Our gyms have a variety of cardio, weights, and resistance training options available, as well as an area for free-form exercise such as yoga or stretching, complete with all the necessary equipment.
Next, we offer ergonomic training and equipment to our employees so they can be well supported while they work. We give ergonomic training to all our staff, so they have the knowledge on how to set up their desks to be ergonomically sound. We provide footrests, ergonomic chairs, wrist supports for keyboards and mice, laptop and monitor stands, and many other things. We have also purchased and provided sit/stand desks for our employees who require them.
We offer a generous benefit package that includes yearly maximums of $500 for each paramedical service (physiotherapy, chiropractic therapy, massage therapy, etc.) per plan member. In terms of our employee’s mental well-being, we offer a large vacation policy to allow our employees time away to decompress and relax.
We also work with our employees if they need to go on leave for mental health reasons or for spiritual events. Next, in our benefits plan, we offer a yearly maximum of $1,000 for mental health experts per plan member. This can include therapists, psychologists, clinical counselors, psychotherapists, etc.
During our virtual companywide huddles we have made it a point to have mental wellness tips and relevant resources information to help our staff who may not feel comfortable reaching out directly to their manager or human resources. During the pandemic we gathered a list of supports in our local area that were free or inexpensive to use.
Additionally, we invite guest speakers to join our company-wide huddles to talk to our staff. One notable example was a former Olympic athlete who became a coach and stress therapist. Lastly, we have a section at the end of the company wide huddle where our Chief of Staff does a presentation about topics relating to mental well-being and some skills. Some of the topics in 2022 were mindset, communication, and mental welfare. Our staff have found this helpful and used some of the teachings in their personal lives.
In terms of caretaking responsibilities we have many supports available to our staff. We have flex-time which allows our staff the freedom to flex their work week. Employees can choose when they can start and end their workday as long as they work a total of 40 hours a week and are present for our core hours of 10 am to 4pm. They also have the flexibility to take some time off, even during core business hours, and make up the hours earlier or later in the week. This gives them the ability to pick up school-aged children, go to appointments or visit family members who need support during the workday without having to use vacation or personal leave.
Similarly, we have a hybrid work model that gives the majority of our staff the ability to remain remote while working. This allows for our caretaking responsibilities. They can work from a loved one’s location which allows them to be present and help when needed. Furthermore, we also work with our employees if they need more time off. Recently an employee took 2 months off to fly home to care for a family member who was recovering from an operation and was on an end-of-life prognosis. While this did strain our business and put the employee’s department in a difficult position for a few weeks we all understood that this was an important time for the employee and their family. It was priceless for them to make memories with a relative who may not be around much longer and we were happy to work with them to provide support.
The pandemic was a challenging time for all companies. When companies were required to shut their doors, we quickly transitioned to being fully remote for the recommended two weeks. As the weeks turned into months of working remotely, we reacted quickly to the needs of our staff. We started hosting a virtual companywide huddle every two weeks. This helped to keep our company culture alive by keeping the connection between our staff. Similarly, we had virtual social events to ensure we all had the opportunity to connect on a personal level. These events included virtual bingo nights, Friday virtual happy hours and a virtual holiday party. For the virtual holiday party, we sent each of our staff a $75 Uber Eats voucher to order food, gave out prizes for the most festive outfits, and had our annual award ceremony to recognize our amazing staff, all via using video conferencing. Each department also started to have team meetings where substantial focus was centered on personal connection and chats about topics that were purposely not work related. The goal of these meetings was for team members to still have a chance to ask about each other’s weekends, talk about what was occurring in their personal lives, and give the forum to talk about how each other were coping, in the scope of their personal situations. The frequencies ranged from once a day to twice a week. Once the world started opening and medical officials lifted some restrictions, we opened our offices to give employees an opportunity to work together in-person again. We also hosted some in-person events such as an off-site company BBQ so that we could see each other and connect in person.
All these measures helped to address and kept our company culture strong and kept morale up during the uncertain times of the Covid-19 Pandemic. We also didn’t cease with career development for our staff, nor did we have any layoffs or hiring freezes that many other industries and companies did. This gave our staff confidence and stability in the company and their jobs, which helped lessen the negative effects of volatility that everyone was experiencing in connection with the Covid-19 Pandemic.
| Closing company statements:
Our tech culture is one of empowerment and innovation. We encourage people to try new things and to make an impact in our company. We give our employees autonomy over their work and the ability to step outside their comfort zone so they can create and be thinkers not just doers. Our leadership understands that mistakes will happen, and dead ends are more common than successes, but that doesn’t mean we want people to stop trying. We encourage our employees to try again, test out a new method or procedure, and to learn from their mistakes. Sometimes the best discoveries come from learning what doesn’t work and using this knowledge for future projects. Many of our staff feel they have found an environment and place where they are valued and respected. As our recent employee survey showed, many employees see themselves working here for the rest of their careers. We strive to maintain and continually improve this environment everyday because we want employees who are excited for what the day will hold and feel supported to try new things. |
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