Inside TrustRadius: Winner of OpenComp’s People-first Employers to Watch in 2023 Award — A Series C Company Backed By Mayfield, Next Coast, and Live Oak

Jamy Conrad is senior director of people at TrustRadius, winner of OpenComp’s People-first Employers to Watch in 2023 Award in the 100-500 employees category. In this interview, Conrad shares how TrustRadius designs and measures a human-centered employee experience, starting with a five-star hiring process. She also shares three ways employers can measure their employee experience strategies.

A little about Jamy Conrad

Jamy Conrad is the senior director of people at TrustRadius. Before joining the startup in 2021, she held HR roles at tech and healthcare companies, including PAM Health, Travis Medical, and BioMet Indiana. She’s also an advisory board member at HR.com.

Tell us about TrustRadius.

TrustRadius is a research and software review platform for business leaders. We’re a Series C funded by Mayfield Fund, Next Coast Ventures, Live Oak Ventures, and Koa Labs.

Before the pandemic, we were 100% in-office with a strict “must be in-office to work” culture. As we moved through the pandemic, we realized that supporting our existing employees as human beings was more important than being in an office. We’re now remote-first with a flexible work policy that includes an option of coming into our Austin office for locals.

How do you define employee-centricity?

Employee-centricity is creating a culture that supports the employee voice and participation, so it defines the organization’s competitive advantage.

What are the pillars of your employee experience strategy?

The pillars are based on our company’s core values, which are Transparent, Respectful, Unstoppable, Team Players, and Human. Or TRUTH. Here’s how we think about each one:

• Transparent: We share more with our employees than most companies because we believe transparency builds trust. This core value is the model for our business “north star” and is key to everything we do.
• Respectful: We recognize that every voice matters and encourage employees to share their ideas.
• Unstoppable: We celebrate the wins, encourage continuous learning and improvement, and provide flexible policies and benefits that remove some of the worry that comes from being a human in the working world.
• Team Players: The focus is less on what we do and more about how we achieve it together.
• Human: How cool is it for me as a people leader to work in an organization that has “human” as a core value? We lean into this one the most. When we make a mistake, or an employee makes a mistake, we own it, provide feedback, and fix it together. When an employee wants to start a new project, we provide a safe environment for them to do so. And when an employee is in crisis, we surround them with love. Our CEO, Vinay Bhagat, is an amazingly passionate, empathetic leader. When it comes to helping employees in crisis, he supports a “do more” approach.

How do you measure the effectiveness of your employee experience strategy?

We measure results in three ways.

1. First is the response rate to our bi-annual employee engagement survey. We’re up to an 85% participation rate. That’s because employees believe in what we stand for as a business: every voice is important. Also, employees know we take their feedback seriously and create action around it.
   
   
2. We also track our eNPS score, which has increased by over 32 points since late 2020, and we’re now beating the B2B & SaaS industry eNPS benchmark. The best part is we’re just getting started.
   
   
3. Finally, we ask our employees to tell us every week how they’re feeling about their work. These pulse scores give us an opportunity to dig into the employee experience at the individual level and make meaningful, lasting changes.

What do you do to optimize candidate experience?

I believe the candidate experience starts with the job ad and application process. We leverage technology to modernize the application experience, allow for easy scheduling and feedback collection, and be transparent regarding next steps and pay. The candidate experience is the first impression you make on your future employees, and it’s critical to set that five-star experience expectation right from the start of the relationship.

How do you approach career pathing?

This is a critical aspect of the manager/employee relationship that often gets overcomplicated. We’re developing career paths at TrustRadius as we speak. My goal is to provide a framework for managers and employees to have the conversations about career paths and possibilities at TrustRadius without making an employee feel locked in. Career paths should be fluid and flexible so that either party can introduce new ideas and possibilities at any time.

How do you ensure pay equity and pay transparency across the employee lifecycle?

Transparent and established processes, along with a communicated compensation philosophy, are important. Also, if you’re responsible for compensation practices in your organization, don’t be afraid to speak up and push back when there’s a request that’s outside of normal practices. Deviations may be necessary in certain circumstances, but each one opens the door for inequity now or in the future.

What’s your approach to Glassdoor reviews?

We’ve taken a proactive approach by encouraging employees to leave a Glassdoor review as part of our employee lifecycle. All voices matter. Of course, we hope the reviews are positive, but as we all know, they aren’t always a score of 5. We take the time to respond to Glassdoor reviews and appreciate when employees — former and current — give us an opportunity to improve.

What tactics are you testing right now to improve the employee experience?

We’re looking at how we can make an impact by providing more training and resources to our mid-level managers. Right now, we have several passionate first-time leaders. I think this is awesome, and I’m excited to test different approaches to leadership development with this team.

Want to learn more from Jamy Conrad?
Watch our on-demand webinar, 3 Things HR Leaders Must Know About Retention in 2023.