Flipsnack Amplifies Communication And Transparency to Scale Culture Using 15Five
About Flipsnack
Founded in 2011, Flipsnack is an online page-flip catalog maker used by over one million people and organizations around the world to create interactive publications. Users are able to convert PDF files into page-flip catalogs, or design publications directly in Flipsnack by leveraging the hundreds of professionally designed catalog templates and an easy-to-use design tool in the platform.
Flipsnack’s culture
Marketing Manager, Janina Moza, describes Flipsnack as being “a group of passionate people, collaborating together, growing together,” who are anchored by a set of actionable values that are responsible for much of the company’s growth and success. To remain successful through accelerated growth, Flipsnack realized it must scale its company culture and values in tandem with continuous improvements to its platform and user experience.
After investigating various HR tools to help, Flipsnack found 15Five to be an ideal fit for helping with these objectives, given the platform is designed to help improve performance, engagement, communication, and alignment of goals.
Closing the communication gap
From 2017 to 2020, Flipsnack doubled in size. Without a tool to keep track of 1-on-1 meetings or maintain employee engagement, Flipsnack quickly saw a need for 15Five to help facilitate communication across the company to maintain transparency and agility to aid innovation and growth, and to scale company culture.
The 1-on-1 feature in 15Five helps us stay focused in our meetings by allowing us to prepare the discussion agenda in advance and automatically integrate action items into our bi-weekly 15Five Check-ins. This way, 1-on-1 meetings become a really valuable and actionable tool for both managers and employees.
Janina Moza, Marketing Manager
In addition to 1-on-1s, Flipsnack employees now fill out a 15Five Check-in every two weeks, helping them stay focused on their goals and on learning and developing new skills that help the company grow. One of the standout features in the Check-in that Janina and other managers value are the “ready-made question templates, which are really insightful and versatile,” she says.
By asking the right questions in the 15Five Check-in, we can support employees in discovering their best-selves.
Janina Moza, Marketing Manager
High Fives in 15Five also help Flipsnack employees stay engaged and communicate accomplishments to each other and the company. “Celebrating accomplishments is actually one of the traits that defines our company culture,” Janina says, “so High Fives help us maintain this key aspect of our company culture.”
Communication in a remote work environment
In addition to overcoming new communication challenges that arise with rapid growth, Flipsnack recently had to shift to fully remote work during 2020’s coronavirus pandemic, not to mention as it was onboarding new members of the team.
Naturally, digital tools for communication became more important than ever for Flipsnack. While video conferencing and messaging software have been vital for the company, 15Five has helped Flipsnack employees stay in contact with each other in a different and meaningful way that allows them to stay focused on their growth journeys, Janina says.
If we didn’t have 15Five during COVID-19, we would probably focus almost exclusively on tasks and features, while neglecting other important aspects, such as strengths, accomplishments and areas of growth. 15Five helps us navigate this challenging time by communicating about these important aspects and staying focused on our objectives.
Janina Moza, Marketing Manager
Regular conversations about individual performance
One of the most important changes Flipsnack has made to accommodate for growth and to scale its company culture is facilitating more consistent, regular conversations about performance. Prior to 15Five, the company was using a tool for annual performance reviews, which limited formal conversations about performance, engagement, and recognition to a few weeks per year.
After implementing 15Five, Flipsnack replaced its annual performance review with the Best-Self Review in 15Five for more regular discussions about performance, not to mention a more customizable experience that allows Flipsnack to adapt the Best-Self Review to the company’s needs.
For example, as Flipsnack was beginning its semi-annual performance reviews in 2020, it was forced to abruptly shift to a fully remote company due to the coronavirus pandemic. Regardless, the company decided to move forward with performance reviews and discovered the Best-Self Review made it easy and painless to conduct these important conversations remotely.
Aligning goals for improved team performance
While Flipsnack uses the Best-Self Review to track and encourage individual performance, the company also uses department-level objectives within 15Five to improve team performance. Prior to objectives, Flipsnack didn’t have an OKR system in place, so goals were set only at an individual level and were more focused on personal growth rather than how each person or department can contribute to the success of the company.
Objectives in 15Five fit perfectly with the way we decided to set goals and keep track of them. Everyone can see the company goals, department goals as well as the goals of other departments.
Janina Moza, Marketing Manager
A more rewarding experience
Overall, Janina says Flipsnack’s experience with 15Five for improving performance and scaling company culture has been “completely different” than other platforms they’ve used, noting 15Five is:
• More customizable and easier to use, with an intuitive interface and functionality resembling the experience of being in a social media platform, which has helped build engagement with 15Five at Flipsnack.
• Robust with features, yet without any major technical problems—an issue Flipsnack experienced with a previous tool.
The more we use 15Five, the more we like it. 15Five makes employee engagement easy, regardless of the size of the company, and it helps keep us all on the same page as we grow. We’re seeing quantifiable results around engagement in our 15Five Reporting, and the numbers are a great indicator that our team is actually engaged with the platform, with 15Five submission rates jumping from 25% to 70% in just the past year.
Janina Moza, Marketing Manager
