Nextiva
Scottsdale, AZ
Grade: A
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Summary: Annual spirit day, work passionately to cultivate a culture of engagement, Nextiva Cares philanthropy arm, annual on-site health fair, training classes, 2,000 meals given to those in need, “work hard, play hard” mentality, Employees receive custom Nextiva items on their annual “Nextiversaries.” Free weekly breakfast and lunch catered by local vendors and healthy snacks. Core values: agile, innovating, embrace failing as a part of the road to success.
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Intro: We believe that candidates are attracted to Nextiva because of our innovative culture, our amazing employee perks and benefits, and the growth opportunities we provide to our team members. Our culture truly is special. Nextiva believes that people make our company great, so we work passionately to cultivate a culture of engagement. One way that we do this is through planning internal and external events at Nextiva. These events include department appreciation days, movie days for the whole family where Nextiva hosts a private screening at a nearby theater, our annual flag football tournament, or our annual spirit day. Our team has a lot of vibrant energy and these events help drive our culture. When candidates look at Nextiva as a potential employer, they see that we value our culture and our employees in addition to our growth. All of these things make Nextiva an attractive employer to potential candidates.
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Impact statements:
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Advancement Opportunities:
At Nextiva, every department has a career advancement program that is focused on developing the skills and experience needed to move to the next phase of their chosen career path. One advancement program that has proved exceptionally successful is for our Tier 1 Technical Support. When someone begins their career at Nextiva in Technical Support, they build a strong technical knowledge foundation through our Apprentice program, which is recognized both on a state and national level. During this time, new technicians are guided through labs, live customer calls, and classroom lessons. At the end of this training program, they take a test that will help our coaches determine what areas that individual may still need to review, and it will also confirm that they are ready to take calls from the main customer support line on their own.
Once a technical representative is comfortable in their new role, they are encouraged to take additional training classes offered onsite, which give them an even deeper technical understanding of our products and services. These classes prepare individuals for the test that will elevate these employees from an Apprentice to Specialist. After this, they have the option to take additional course to advance to the Expert level. These courses provide team members with essential skills that not only make them successful at Nextiva, but in all areas of their life. The opportunities available to these team members is timeless, and they are encouraged to move along a path that aligns best with their interests and personal career goals.
Measuring satisfaction:
We utilize a variety of ways to measure team member satisfaction, and we believe this begins with cultivating an open-door environment. At Nextiva, we want team members to share their feedback without fear. For example, managers schedule weekly time with their team members individually to discuss insights on the week’s successes and points for improvement. These meetings are kept casual and fluid to encourage a continuous exchange of ideas in both directions. Furthermore, our executive team always leaves their doors open so anyone can stop by, which further promotes a culture where our team feels confident that their feedback is valuable and importantly heard.
Another unique exercise that Nextiva has organized is hosting town hall style meetings with our CEO, Tomas Gorny. The purpose of these town hall meetings is to encourage team members to bring any questions or comments to our CEO so that he may address these openly and publicly. Team members are strongly encouraged to leave no question unasked, even if questions include feedback for our CEO about how Nextiva can continue to improve.
Finally, directly asking team members for their honest feedback on different areas of our business and culture provides key insight for positive growth. We do this through anonymous surveying, which we thoroughly review. We find common themes in people’s feedback and then prioritize projects that will make the biggest impact at our company. We then earn our team members’ trust because they know that we listen to their feedback and make adjustments that will create a better environment for all.
At Nextiva, we believe that our physical environment has a huge effect on our attitudes and work performance. Because of this, we promote a clean, open workspace that allows for both group collaboration and individual focus.
Team members also value their personal space and belongings, which is why we encourage employees to decorate their workspaces however they wish, as long as it doesn’t interfere with or distract other team members.
In addition to our employees’ individual workspaces, Nextiva provides clean and functioning break rooms and kitchens with fully stocked kitchen necessities, vending machines and healthy snack options, and free coffee and team machines.
Creative meeting places:
- Internal and external team events are an essential part of our fun culture at Nextiva, and our aim is continually excite and surprise our team members with every event. An annual event that is a highlight for all of the Amazing Bowl, our annual flag football tournament. It takes place every year following the Super Bowl, and there is a draft, team practices, etc. People look forward to it every year and it gives our team a chance to participate in some friendly competition and bond outside of the office.
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Another event that we added to our calendar this year was bringing the whole team and their families to a movie day. We have lots of Star Wars fans here at Nextiva, and we thought it would be a blast to rent out a couple of theaters on opening weekend this past December. This event turned out to be a huge success, and our team really appreciated that they were able to bring a family member and hang out with their coworkers. Due to its success, we will continue to host movie weekends for our team during the holidays in the years to come.
Perks:
In addition to working with great people on Nextiva’s team, we provide amazing perks to further improve our team’s culture.
One perk our team members love is our birthday and anniversary program. For birthdays, employees receive individual birthday brownies delivered to their workspace, and teams within our departments have created their birthday traditions as well. For work anniversaries, or what we call “Nextiversaries,” employees receive custom Nextiva items that increase in value each year. The first anniversary includes a Nextiva t-shirt with a personalized message from each team member’s manager. The second year includes customized Nike shoes, and many more items increasing in value up to the 8-year mark. Since Nextiva is almost 9 years young, as we grow our anniversary incentives will continue to grow with us.
In addition to gifts for special occasions, we offer free weekly breakfast and lunch catered by local vendors and healthy snacks to our team. This ensures our team has the energy needed to focus on their work. For our snacks, we focus on offering healthy options, such as fresh fruit, trail mix and energy bars to coincide with our wellness program efforts.
Fun:
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We believe it is important to take time for play during the workday, and we encourage team members to take breaks, get fresh air, and reset. One unique way we do this is by hosting a daily morning walking club. Our volunteer health committee leads a 15-minute outdoor walk around our office park, and anyone is welcome to join. Team members even schedule meetings during this time so they can get work done while enjoying the fresh air.
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Another way that we encourage a culture of fun is by hosting department appreciation days. We spotlight one department for the day, and really make a big deal out of the department’s contributions to our company. We host a raffle with great prizes, play games, create a special video, provide massages, etc.
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We also host a weekly internal news show where the entire company participates in the different skits and news updates. It’s a great way to share company announcements and make people laugh.
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How corporate vision is communicated:
Nextiva’s corporate vision is constantly communicated to our teams through our mission of providing Amazing Service. This mission is not only directed toward providing fantastic customer service, but to each team member every day. If we all help each other accomplish our goals, we will ultimately provide the best service to our customers and each other, which is Nextiva’s overarching corporate vision.
Empowering employees:
Team recognition is a big part of our internal culture, and we have a few main channels that we use to share this recognition. The first is through our internal community blog. The blog includes posts about internal promotions, photos from team events, volunteer opportunities, and numerous shout outs to teams and individuals who have provided fantastic service to a customer or to another team member, which we call Amazing Service. The resource keeps people updated in real time with new posts added daily, and with a vastly growing company, the blog keeps people up to date on Nextiva news every day.
The second way people are recognized is through our ‘Kudos’ program. Customers often receive Amazing Service and want to share this publically. After an intercation with one of our Support representatives, customers then head to our social media channels and post about their positive experiences nearly every single day. In addition to public recognition, customers also send emails to [email protected] praising the customer service and experience they had with a team member. These shout-outs are read by our management team and displayed on a television in our Operations department to spread the positive responses throughout the team and recognize team members even more. This way everyone including the team member being recognized,, can read about a job well done! It’s amazing walking past the television and seeing the rising stars in our company, shine, as well as knowing our customers have had an excellent experience with Nextiva.
The final way that we recognize people here is through NexTV, our internal weekly news show. Each episode is about 6-10 minutes long and include different segments to communicate the Nextiva news that week. One segment that we will always include is Department Discoveries where we interview a few people from one department to share more about what they do at Nextiva or how someone on their ream really shined that week. The episodes are sent to every person in our company and is has become a wonderful Friday lunch tradition at Nextiva. Currently we have produced over 210 episodes and have not missed a Friday since creating our news show.
At Nextiva, team members are encouraged to effect change through our core values. We see ourselves as a very innovative and agile company, and therefore we greatly value team members who challenge us to always strive to do better. We make it known that we do not fear failing, but see it as an integral part of ultimately succeeding. With these core company values, we encourage team members to share ideas on ways we can improve our internal processes, products, communication, etc. All feedback is taken into account and shared with the appropriate team. Everyone has a unique perspective and we have found that collaboration leads to advancements in all areas of the company. Finally, we promote an open-door culture so that when a team member at any level in our business has a new idea to share, they are able to get face-time with someone in our executive team.
As we mentioned previously, Nextiva has a few core values that we use to empower our team members to make decisions, take risks and ultimately be successful. These core values are being agile, innovating and embrace failing as a part of the road to success. One example of these core values in action is that we do not have any scripts of any kind for our representatives that speak to our customers. We believe that scripts are not authentic and do not nurture a representative’s ability to problem solve, especially in solving tough technical problems. Another example of living these core values is that we focus on publicly praising work well done, and onlyh coach team members on areas of weakness privately. Our public “Kudos” board is located in our technical support department, and it is filled with notes from happy customers who have taken the time to send positive feedback about a representative that they worked with. This public praise reinforces trust with our team members, and this then translates into team members feeling empowered to make their own decisions in their role.
Ensuring well-being:
The health and well-being of our team members are of the highest importance to us here at Nextiva, and we have several wellness programs to support our team in their health journeys. The first way that we do this is by bringing a qualified health coach on-site to Nextiva every month. Our health coach has been working with our company for over two years, and has been able to build personal relationships with the team through her coaching sessions. Coaching sessions are completely free for team members, and they are offered in 15-minute time slots. This ensures that team members have the opportunity to get great advice and counseling on diet and exercise without leaving the office.
Next, we host an annual health fair on-site where vendors from all areas of the health and medical field offer free advice, free products and free screenings to our team for the day. These vendors include gyms, health products, chiropractic clinics, and massage clinics just to name a few categories. Our team members are able to have their biometrics tested, and we even bring mobile clinics on site or free breast and prostate cancer screenings. If a team member participated in the previous year’s health fair, they are able to compare their results from one year to the next with a health care professional who can point them to resources that may assist them on their health journey.
Lastly, we support our team through our insurance and health benefits. Our insurance is very high quality, and we continue to invest more and more every year in to our insurance coverage program. Investing in our team’s well-being is extremely important to us at Nextiva. We believe that if our team is healthy and happy, they will perform better at work, reach their career goals and thrive.
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Closing company statements: At Nextiva, we often look at whether or not someone is a ‘culture’ fit in addition to their technical qualifications or relevant experience. If we interviewed someone that was qualified based off of their resume, we also want to make sure that they share our core values. Nextiva’s culture is very much ‘work hard, play hard’, and while this may sound cliché, it really is how we are successful at our organization. We expect our team to give their all in the day-to-day, and that hard work should be rewarded. This is why we are always planning internal and external events, as well as holding department appreciation days. A can-do attitude is essential to succeeding at Nextiva, and we are always looking for people who take responsibility for their own success with the training, support and the resources that we provide for them. And finally, we look for candidates who believe in our principle of Amazing Service. This principle is about more than just delivering great customer service; it extends to the way we treat each other and the way we approach our projects and tasks. In short, whether it is our customers or a fellow team member, a candidate should always treat them how they would want to be treated.
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