More than 4,300 companies were nominated or asked to participate in the 2019 Top Workplaces contest by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and its partner, Energage (formerly Workplace Dynamics). Employees across the metro area responded to print and online solicitations that began appearing in September.
When Jordan Arogeti gave birth to son Nace last year, meals were delivered to her home twice a week and a cleaning service stopped in every other week. She didn’t have to buy diapers.
Her employer, SalesLoft, provided the food and housecleaning for six weeks — and the diapers for a year — as part of Arogeti's benefits package.
And when Arogeti returned to work after her 12 weeks of paid leave, the company offered the flexibility to work from home some days for the first four weeks back.
Those are the types of employee benefits that made SalesLoft the top-ranked midsize workplace in metro Atlanta.
“We’re providing for them in more ways than just time off and paid time off, which those are world class as well,” co-founder and CEO Kyle Porter said, describing the maternity and paternity policy as landmark and industry leading.
SalesLoft, Arogeti said, wants to “evolve with us. They want to develop with us, so that they can serve us, so that we can serve them better.”
“They invest a lot of resources in me, which is incredible as an employee,” she added. “But SalesLoft is better as a result of that, and I feel that every day.”
Porter echoes that idea.
"We embrace the transformative power of technology innovation for our customers, but we believe in people first," he said in a statement. "Our founding purpose is to create an environment where others can come to learn more, do more and become more. Team members are encouraged to take their talents and skills and apply them to serve others and find fulfillment. We show love to our people so they can share that sentiment with our customers."
This workplace culture is just one reason employees raved about SalesLoft.
A leading sales engagement platform, SalesLoft has 335 employees. In addition to its Midtown headquarters, SalesLoft has locations in San Francisco, New York City, and Guadalajara, Mexico.
An acquisition in spring 2018 — around the same time LinkedIn invested in a $50 million round of financing — allowed SalesLoft to open the Mexico office with engineering teams.
Additions to benefits are driven by Porter, winner of the 2019 Top Workplaces Leadership special award for midsize workplaces, and COO and President Rob Forman, said Christine Kaszubski, who was hired in December 2017 as chief people officer. Kaszubski said her philosophy is to create programs at SalesLoft that will be standard at other companies.
“I want to be industry-leading, and they see it the same way, so that’s why we are such a good fit,” she said.
Those programs include the 98point6 app, which provides on-demand consultants with primary care physicians. SalesLoft also closed the office between Christmas and New Year’s Day, “because we want people to be able to have that time to disconnect,” Kaszubski said.
Investing in employees
SalesLoft’s mission is to transform companies into modern sales organizations, and to do that, it builds leaders within its own organization.
In the next year, the company plans to hire 150 people.
“We end up hiring about 1.2 percent of all candidates that apply to SalesLoft because culture fit and connecting with our core values is so important,” Kaszubski said.
Those core values are: Put customers first; team over self; glass half full; focus on results; bias toward action.
“When an executive joins a team, they know our values because we talk about them through the interview process,” Forman said. “We go through their entire chronological work history and look for patterns of how they’ve behaved throughout, and how and why they make decisions, and then we’ve had two off-sites integrating them into the leadership team.”
To help employees succeed, the company offers a Leadership Exploration and Development course in coaching, public speaking and negotiation. The Smart Dollar course emphasizes financial wellness.
Arogeti took the public speaking course to prepare for a conference, she said it was the single best investment that SalesLoft has made in her.
“What I love is that they’re investing not just necessarily in hard skills that make me better at selling,” said Arogeti, a sales executive. “They’re investing in the soft skills and the part of me that I can take wherever.”
SalesLoft also offers $5,250 tuition reimbursement per employee each year for training outside of the company.
Breaks and benefits
In addition to a week of mandatory paid time off, SalesLoft employees enjoy daily breakfast and snacks, and free lunch three times a week.
“It’s kind of insane, to be honest … how many perks there are and how valuable the perks are that they’re giving,” said Jimmy Conley, who works in the professional services department. “The lunches are an obvious one because I think it’s great to be able to not have to spend your own money or to take a huge break in your day to go grab a bite to eat and get back to it, or to have a great conversation and learn about your fellow colleagues.”
“Lunch” doesn’t necessarily mean sandwiches and chips. A recent lunch menu featured salads, chicken Provencal, spicy garlic shrimp scampi, and vegan and gluten-free options. Refrigerators are stocked with drinks, and snacks include potato chips, popcorn, peanut butter, fruit and protein bars.
Other perks include ping pong, chess and pool, and an onsite gym with fitness classes and daily meditation.
And for those days when being in the office just isn’t possible, SalesLoft’s “work from anywhere” policy gives employees flexibility.
“I think that the health care is fantastic, the work-from-anywhere is fantastic, but I prefer to be here because there’s too much good going on here to be at home. I feel like I miss out,” Conley said.
