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Welcome to The Culture Code podcast. On this podcast, you’ll learn how to grow, shape, and sustain a high-performance culture with the CEO of LEADx, Kevin Kruse. From designing and delivering highly effective leadership development programs, to measuring and improving the employee experience, you will understand what it takes to cultivate a thriving company culture. Through interviews with Chief People Officers, deep dives into key topics, and recordings of our invite-only community sessions, we bring you cutting-edge, data-backed insights from the most desirable companies to work for in the world.
Kruse: All right, here we go. Hello, everyone. I'm Kevin Kruse. Welcome back to Culture Code. Our guest today is the Chief People Officer of Top Tall, Labbe. Michelle, welcome! And where are you coming from today, by the way?
Labbe: Thank you for having me, Kevin. I'm currently in Southwest Florida, Bonita Springs.
Kruse: Bonita Springs, so like, really, really hot, right?
Labbe: Like 115 heat index today.
Kruse: Oh my gosh, I'm just outside Philly, northeast. It's been nice, but everyone's joking about going lobstering down in Florida, and the lobsters are already cooked for you. It's like the water temperature is supposed to be so hot right now.
Labbe: Yeah, it's not relaxing if you get into a pool or the ocean.
Kruse: That's crazy. Well, I wish for cooler weather soon for you.
Labbe: Luckily, we have air conditioning. So yes, absolutely.
Kruse: I was just interviewing someone who's in Austin, Texas, also experiencing heat, and he said, "It isn't so bad." He says, "Look, you work during the day, you're in air conditioning, and when you go out, it's usually in the morning, or you're going out at night, and it's a little cooler." So he says it's not that big a deal, but it'd be nice to have the cooler pools.
Labbe: Absolutely.
Kruse: So, Michelle, for those who might not be familiar with [your company], how big is your organization, and in plain language, what do you do?
Labbe: Absolutely, so we were founded in 2010 and have never had an office. We're 100% fully remote, now being the world's largest fully remote workforce. Over the years, we've served more than 21,000 clients, and our global network of talent spans 140+ countries. Toptal connects the world's top talent in business, design, and technology. Our mission is to enable companies to scale their teams on demand.
Kruse: Could you provide an estimate of the number of core employees at Toptal?
Labbe: So, roughly 1,300 plus in 700 countries.
Kruse: Yeah, that's incredible. And I wanna clarify for the listeners – when you're talking about top talent in a talent marketplace – there are other marketplaces out there that might be great places for me to hire a ghostwriter or someone specialized in web development. But I could literally go to your website and find, let's say, a Chief People Officer, right? It's Toptal.
Labbe: Yep, it's the top 3 of talent worldwide. You have to do a lot of testing. So we're not one of those companies. There are other ones you can just sign up for, and you are an expert, right? And you can say you're an expert. But we actually go through a lot of testing and screening and checking to make sure you really are an expert, and you say you have the skills you do.
Kruse: So, you were fully remote from day one, a little early on the fully remote trend.
Labbe: Absolutely. Covid did not impact us as much as it did other people.
Kruse: Why do you think the organization was remote from day one? And do you think you figured out some tips that people could learn from you? We're hearing stories about even Zoom calling people back to work, of all places. So, what are you guys doing that others haven't quite figured out?
Labbe: Well, I think our founder, Tasso Duval, was really smart in figuring out that, you know, he was looking for engineers. He found them in Eastern Europe, where he needed a lot of projects and could hire them around the world. He was in the States, on the West Coast. But, you know, things need to happen overnight and at all times of the day to keep things going around the clock. You go to bed, and you want something done; you wake up, and it's already done for you. Having people all around the world also brings a diversity of talent. So, one of the things that we do and I love about Toptal is when I post a job, I post it anywhere in the world. You can live anywhere. I just want the best person for the job, as long as you can speak and write in English.
I also think, you know, we get rid of the overhead. There's no office. It's not hierarchical because I don't know if you're sitting in an office, a cube, or a bench. We're all boxes on a screen. We don't use email; actually, we are a Zoom and Slack company. When we're talking to clients or candidates, we use email. But internally, we're engaging, helping each other, collaborating. We spend a lot of time on our culture, on how to bring people together and make them feel like we're one company. There's something for everybody. That's the thing that brings me the greatest joy. When I got called about this job, I was like, "What do you mean? An HR job that's fully remote? Never heard of that before. What does that look like?" And almost 5 years later, it's incredible.
Kruse: So, we're gonna go into the details of how you can keep the culture and develop the culture you have. How would you describe your company culture in just a few words?
Labbe: So, one of the things that I – that we do – is we have our culture page on our website, and we send it to every candidate when they're interviewing. Our cultural attributes are listed, and we send them to every candidate when they're interviewing. I would say that the attributes that stand out to me are what I somewhat mentioned: being collaborative, direct, helpful, and, I would probably say, challenging. So, when you're remote, you can't really hide – I mean, you can hide – but it's all about your output, right? So it's, you know, I don't care if you have to walk your dog or go to the dentist, or whatever, but you know what your job is and what you have to do to perform and what we expect.
Kruse: Yeah, that's, and not to make this whole show about the remote thing. What are some of the ways you foster or sustain this culture? Any unique rituals or traditions related to your culture?
Labbe: Yeah, and I would say, you know, I've been at many companies where you have this culture page up, and you see it, and it's not real when it's not, you know? You don't walk the walk and talk the talk kind of what you just put on the website or put on your wall in an office. Our culture is really, you know, the DNA that's running through our organization. So we hired it. We do culture interviews when we're interviewing people. We review it, right? So when we're doing peer reviews, manager feedback – we don't have a formal annual review process, it's ongoing now. But all of those feedback forms require you to kind of rate somebody's culture and how they're embracing it. Our rewards and recognition program is built around our cultural attributes. And so really, everybody knows, and you can be in a meeting and get challenged, "Hey, I'm not sure that's the best idea that I've ever seen," and you have to know it's coming from a place of good intentions because that's who we are, and that really, you know, our leaders and our managers, it's how we run initiatives. It's how we have OKRs. It's how we run meetings. It's about accountability, and you see it in every meeting that we're in.
Kruse: So much good stuff here. I want to highlight for the listeners is, I love it that you started with, "We hire for it." There are some people I don't completely agree with, like Jim Collins, the "Good to Great" author. He says you can't change culture; you have to hire different people to change culture. He doesn't think you can really change behaviors. I don't take it quite that far, but it sure is easier to hire people that fit right instead of trying to get them to change their ways.
Labbe: People that we've sent our culture page to and looked at it, and they're like, you know what? I don't think that's for me. And I'm like, great, no problem. I'm glad we know coming upfront because, you know, it's not a fit. We're a startup. We are 40-year-over-year growth historically like we move fast. And so, you know, you kind of want to get on. And there are a lot of like-minded people here.
Kruse: That's a sign of a great culture, right? It's a culture that will act as a magnet to draw in people who want to be part of that tribe, but it will repel many more. You know, because that's a great sign of a unique culture.
Labbe: We have integrations through Slack like Donut, where we have matching people who, like us, care about sustaining our culture. Right? So we make sure that people are meeting up from different countries, that we match people, and they're like having coffee and donuts because we don't have a "you're not meeting somebody in the kitchen when you're getting coffee," right? So we have something called Top Vibes, and we do all these Slack channels – we have Pet Lovers, and Cooking, and Dads in the Trenches, and we do a year-end project. A few years ago, we did a music video internationally. Then we did a cookbook for one year. Last year we took our logo and made something like a Flat Stanley and put it around the world. And everyone's a part of it. This year, we're working on something special, too, for the end of the year. And really, it takes everybody, and everybody contributes.
Kruse: I loved Flat Stanley when I was about 7. So I'm kind of obsessed about the role and the value of frontline leaders. 70% of engagement is correlated to the manager, and front-line managers touch more employees than any other leadership group. What are some of the ways you develop your front-line managers?
Labbe has heavily invested in my learning and development team. I feel strongly that that team is intact and continues to grow. We have done much around manager training. And we continue to. So this year, for instance, we've launched 4 different tabs where there's an intro to people management for people who think like, do I want to be a manager? What does that look like? Is it something you know I do? I have to be a manager to advance in my career. Just, you know, a look at what that looks like. We've done stuff for newly promoted managers, a whole path around that or new to TopTel, because just because you are a manager at another company, how do you manage? Fully remote, for instance? So we have, like, manager foundation courses. And then we have manager excellence courses. So those people are great managers. But how are you gonna get them prepared to be a senior leader at the company? And we cover topics, you know, basically from anything, effective one on ones, how to run a meeting, how to give feedback. What's the difference between coaching, managing, and leading? So really, how to establish trust? Any course you can think of? We rate the courses, we ask for feedback. We conduct lots of surveys. And questioning afterward to say, Did you find this effective? What else are we missing? And I love having our internal team because we can turn a dime. We can build things. You know, if our engineering teams want something specific, and our sales team wants something else. We can pivot because of sales, and engineering managers. Yes, there's a lot in common, but they also are very different.
Kruse: So, is your L&D team delivering these courses through Zoom in a live virtual format, or are these self-paced?
Labbe: So we do a combination. We do a lot of things. We do some that are pre-recorded through Lessonly, which is our LMS that we use, and we supplement some through either Udemy or LinkedIn Learning. We recommend books or Ted talks. So it's really, you know, a bunch of different ways to keep the folks engaged, right? Because if you're just sitting in a seminar or something for hours every time, it's boring. So you really want that interaction.
Kruse: When you talk about the high-performing and unique culture you have, clearly, you can see it. But how do you solicit feedback from employees about the culture and their engagement (e.g., engagement or other surveys, town halls, ?)
Labbe: Yeah. So a couple of things. We do what we call poll surveys through Slack, and those are every other month. We ask just the 2 questions: how happy are you to work here, and how likely are you to recommend somebody? And because we have such a direct and transparent culture, those are not anonymous. So, you know, I encourage everybody to tell me: Where are we failing? Where are we falling behind? What's great? Where can we improve? And then I get on our monthly all-hands and I share: Here's the feedback. Here's what you guys said. We're doing great. Here's where you said we need to fix. And here's what we're going to do about it.
So I have that for the company, and then each of our functions has what we use Culture Amp. We do a survey twice a year to really do the anonymous digging in. How's your manager? You know, a lot of the details. So we do that, plus we have 360 reviews. You can submit the way we've set it up. You can submit a review to anybody at any time. You don't have to be asked. You can, you know. So it's, and you can choose: Is it going to go to you, the person that you're reviewing, and their manager, or just the manager? So we have that, and we also have quarterly functions. The bigger functions have all-hands meetings, either bi-monthly or quarterly, and they're sharing the same results that they're getting as well.
Kruse: Yeah, I love the cadence. You know, the cadence of feedback. We recommend that companies do the employee engagement thing at least twice a year, and then most companies don't want to pulse so frequently. We think the frequency of your pulse survey should match the frequency of the growth. And so, if you're growing 40% a year, you just think about how many new people have joined in any given quarter. So to do a short, not burdensome thing using something like Employee NPS (Net Promoter Score): Would you refer, you know, a friend or family member to work here? I mean, that's just a great way to keep your fingers on the pulse.
Labbe: Can we share it, right? 'Cause that's the big thing you want. You have to give them a chance to know that you have to do something. You know, and you can't fake it, right? And you have to have action plans when you're coming out of these surveys, to say, you know, and then gut-check yourself the next time. Did we do what we said we were gonna do?
Kruse: Yeah, a great way to disengage everybody. Related to culture, are there any special initiatives or results you’re most proud of?
Labbe: I think the thing that we're focused on right now is measuring engagement, right? So really, how engaged are your people? Because I can't see you. I don't walk by your desk and really just look at interactions like, are you part of the mentor program? Are you a culture interviewer? Because we invite people. Are you part of our Top 5 committee? Are you participating in the book club and attending our Lunch and Learns? We do a lot of topics where we have speakers come in, you know, it's like, ha! Really just seeing, because the more engaged you are, the happier you are, more likely you are to stay. So I would say that's one area. And then the second thing we're really focusing on is internal transfers. I really like, you know, I want people to feel like they have opportunities at Toptal. They don't have to leave Toptal. So when we slowed down recruiting a few months ago – picked back up, when we slowed down, I sent a bunch of my recruiters to the sales team. I was like, if you're selling Toptal, you can sell it to candidates, you can sell it to clients. So I spent a lot of time saying, "Do you want this skill set?" And we invest in training people, we invest in saying, "Hey, we'll put you. You can job shadow. You can do this. You can do that," because I really think giving people a new skill set or new opportunities or new chances, even trying something – you don't even have to stay there, something to try.
Kruse: You mentioned a Toptal book club. So, what book would you recommend that your colleagues read? (or podcast, video, etc.)
Labbe: Funny that you asked that because on my podcast I'm a big reader. And on my podcast, I ask everybody, I ask all of my guests what book they would recommend. I had two. But I'm going to say first, "The Culture Map" because we are such an international, globally distributed company. I think that "The Culture Map" by Erin Meyer is really great because it tells you, you know, how people think, get things done, and communicate across cultures. So I think that's huge.
Kruse: She's super strong. She helped write Reed Hastings's book from Netflix, too.
What skill or behavior do you wish your employees did more of?
Labbe: Well, I think what I would like to see is when people own their own future and their career path. It's that proactiveness, you know, where people are like, not something like, "Oh, I didn't get promoted." Did you want to get promoted? Like, speak up and get a mentor, seek advice, and volunteer to work on something that makes you uncomfortable. That's going to challenge you so that you can show what you have in you.
Kruse: It's great. Final question: What excites you the most about your company right now?
Labbe: Oh, that's a big one. I think right now, Toptal's focus – you know, the market, so up and down, right? Who knows what's happening, everyday changes. And so Toptal is really focusing on expanding our offerings, which I'm really proud of. So we can now meet our customers where they are. Instead of just saying, "We have these developers, and we have designers, and we have these people waiting," we can actually offer the services. What do you want? We can bring it to you. We can consult with you and just give you the whole package. We can project-manage it. We can provide you with the staff. We can do whatever you need. So, I think it's really about being able to meet our customers where they are and expanding, you know, it's just not... It's not just an end, it's like it's an end-to-end solution, not just people.
Kruse: Opens up a whole new area. And I can see how that could keep that growth going.
Labbe: Yeah. And really, it's about our people because that's the backbone of our company, and just continuing to grow and hire amazing people that contribute to our culture.
Kruse: Michelle, before you go, I know you mentioned that you are a host of a podcast. So, tell us about the podcast.
Labbe: So, it is called the Talent Economy podcast. If you go to Staffing.com, you will find Talent. And I speak to other people in my position, whether it's Head of HR, Head of Talent, some founders, a couple of Presidents here, learning and development folks. But really, it's conversations that are about a half hour. I talk through every industry, you know. It could be healthcare, it could be Zoom, it could be I talked to the woman in the Grammys and Universal Music Group. So, there's something for everybody. And it's really more about what trends folks are noticing, what's interesting out there, what they're looking for, or what the market's doing, and just sharing great ideas.
Kruse: What look forward to diving into it myself. I've been doing this kind of stuff for 30 years, so I think I'm faking it. But you're doing peer-to-peer. This is like, imagine, you know, 2 great friends who all have the same job, and you're like eavesdropping on their coffee conversation, or whatever beverage people want and so that's an exciting thing, you know, to bring that perspective. I look forward to - to listening in.
Labbe: Great. Thank you
Kruse: Michelle. Thanks again for taking the time. We're doing this on a late Friday afternoon. I know we're both East Coasters. So hopefully, this is your last meeting of the day, but thanks for sharing your practices for great culture.