Long before "American Idol" and "The X Factor" came "The Gong Show," an amateur talent competition where contestants performed their sometimes-dubious talents in front of a panel of celebrity judges. If a contestant was particularly bad, judges would strike a giant gong, forcing an end to the performance. The ultimate goal of the show was not to get gonged.
Not so at Billtrust, a billing solutions company based in Hamilton, NJ. There, CEO Flint Lane regularly "gongs" employees for a job well done. And it's a big deal, says Jeanne O'Connor, Billtrust's director of human resources. "Everybody wants to know who's been gonged. What did they do? What's the recognition? It's an informal way, and a way that plays with our culture to recognize folks," she says.
Once an employee's been officially gonged, they're recognized on Yammer, at the next monthly company meeting, and they receive Billtrust Bucks, which can be redeemed for merchandise at the company store.
Billtrust's version of "The Gong Show" is just one way the company recognizes and rewards its 160 employees. There's a games room at the office complete with a pingpong table and darts board and the company regularly hosts pingpong tournaments to encourage workers to have fun and blow off steam. Last summer, the company hosted the Billtrust Olympics to coincide with the London Olympic Games. Teams from different functional areas that might not work together on a regular basis were partnered up, and each team was assigned a different country. Teams participated in games and activities and were awarded medals.
"We had that friendly competition going, but we're team-building on the side, and people aren't even aware it's happening," says O'Connor. "We try to really just make this a great place to work by regularly doing things so that people just feel excited to be here."
Hiring for cultural fit
And while almost anyone would want to play pingpong and eat ice cream (during the summer months employees are treated to free ice cream from an ice cream truck), O'Connor says hiring for cultural fit is just as important as hiring for a particular skill set.
"People can't hide here," she says. "This is not a large organization, so we're looking for people that are going to fit in that model. It's not for everybody. A company this size, and growing the way we are, and the workload that we have, and the goals that we want to achieve, it's not for everybody. I say it a lot: 'Are you with us? Do you want to be part of this ride?' Those are the people that we're looking for, and those are the people that are most successful here."
Billtrust recently took cultural onboarding to a new level, hiring a full-time training manager.
"We felt like we did a really great job of finding the right people, those A-list players who had not only the skills we were looking for but had that cultural fit," says O'Connor. "But we didn't feel like we were really doing much once they got here. We made a 180-degree turn in that regard."
Now, every employee who joins the company, regardless of their role, meets with every member of the executive team.
"All of our executives spend a minimum of 15 minutes with every single employee to talk a little bit about what it means to work at Billtrust, what their department does, talk a little bit about the culture here and the environment so that these folks have visibility to some of the executives of the company who they might not work with on an everyday basis," says O'Connor.
On a quarterly basis, O'Connor and Billtrust's CEO meet with new employees over lunch, and "we're asking those questions: 'Hey, you know what? You've been here for 90 days, what can we do better? What is great about us? What's not so great? What are some things in other companies that you've seen that you'd like us to do here?'" says O'Connor.
No sacred cows
Asking questions and acting on feedback is a big part of Billtrust's culture. In fact, O'Connor says the company firmly believes there are no sacred cows, so "we empower employees to make suggestions about changes to anything that they think makes sense, whether it's specifically related to their job and what they're doing, or a process or something they see in another area of the organization," she says. "We don't want status quo, we don't want to do things the way they've always been done."
The company created a wellness committee this year in response to employees who were interested in having a say in how Billtrust invests some of their money from a health and wellness perspective.
Seventy employees recently joined the Global Corporate Challenge, a global workplace health program that encourages employees to shake off their sedentary ways and increase their activity levels and exercise to meet challenge milestones.
Employees are participating in the GCC's virtual, step-for-step world trek in a friendly competition with hundreds of thousands of peers the world over.
Moreover, each Billtrust employee participating in the GCC will have the opportunity to make a voluntary donation to some of the world's most impoverished communities. Donations will be matched dollar-for-dollar by the GCC and provided to UNICEF to fund the purchase of water pumps in communities with little or no access to safe, clean water.
Values to live by
Here are Billtrust's core values:
1. What would the customer want?
2. We're Billtrust, we can do anything.
3. There are no sacred cows.
4. Fix the problem, not the blame.
5. Spend every dollar like it was your own.
6. You have two ears and one mouth, use them proportionally.
7. We are not on this planet so that we can work and make money.
