Building a Culture of Listening at Verkada
Agility is core to who we are and how we operate at Verkada. Our founders recognized the clear gap in the market for a modern, cloud-based enterprise security system. We filled that gap, and very quickly grew into a $3.2 billion company.
We’re proud to apply that very same spirit of agility and responsiveness to how we build our team and culture. Intensely data-driven, we’ve built a people organization that constantly collects employee feedback to inform the benefits we offer and the culture we’re building.
The pace of our responsiveness has further increased over the past 12 months. Here are just a few of our most exciting efforts, all of which were either driven or informed by feedback from our employees:
We offered new benefits. In 2021, over a few short days, we rapidly developed and rolled out a new $10K fertility benefit, offering employees and their partners a wide array of fertility-related treatments including egg-freezing and IVF. Today we are expanding that program to cover adoption and surrogacy. In addition to expanding our fertility benefit, we are adding:
Up to $250 in meal reimbursements during parental leave so parents don’t have to cook immediately after welcoming their little ones.
A membership to Milk Stork service for women who travel frequently as part of their jobs. This membership provides moms with everything they need to tote or send their milk home, including pharmaceutical-grade shipping materials, breast milk storage bags and pre-labeled ready-to-go shipping kits.
Back up child care for employees to help parents when their regular childcare arrangements fall through.
We deepened support for our communities. We launched Verkada Gives in 2021 with the aim of giving back to the communities we live and work in. Through the program, we started our AAPI Security Camera Donation Program, donating $100,000 in security equipment to bring much-needed safety and security to Asian-owned businesses in the Bay Area. In 2022 we expanded the program to include the Chicago area. In 2023, we are continuing to invest in Verkada Gives.
We helped employees give back. We give every employee the opportunity to take two paid days off each year to volunteer for an organization of their choice. This year, we’re expanding our program to include regular volunteer opportunities in the office to make it even easier for our employees to give back. For example, just this month, we will assemble care packages for people experiencing homelessness and survivors of domestic violence.
We connected employees with each other. Our Employee Resource Groups (Women at Verkada, Pride at Verkada, Multicultural at Verkada, and Parents at Verkada) empower employees to connect with, learn from, and support each other, during their times of need. We’re excited to share that we have recently launched our newest community group, Veterans at Verkada, this year. It will be spearheaded by former Naval officer Bill Berry, our General Counsel and the newest member of our executive team. The work these groups do to build community in our offices is especially critical as our team is growing so quickly.
At Verkada, we believe that in order to build a company that attracts and retains the best talent, offering a single employee benefit or perk isn’t enough. Instead, what sets successful employers apart is their ability to listen, learn, and quickly react. That’s the kind of organization Verkada continuously strives to be.
Our work, as always, continues. I couldn’t be more excited about the road ahead.
