Jourdan Pym
VP of People & Places, Karbon
Jourdan Pym, Karbon's VP of People & Places, shares the 3 ingredients that went into achieving a Great Place To Work Certification.
Karbon has received the prestigious Great Place To Work Certification across the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
This award was won purely based on the feedback of current Karbon employees.
Karbon VP of People & Places, Jourdan Pym, puts this achievement down to genuine, human-centric company values, having a company-wide purpose that the entire team believes in, and finding (and developing) leaders who care.
Karbon is buzzing with the news that, in a first for our company, we have been certified as a Great Place to Work® across the four countries where most of our Karbonites live and work! Watch out world!
We are thrilled to join the ranks of many before us in formalizing what our people (known as Karbonites) have known for years (10 years in fact!): that we are truly an epic place to work.
But how did we achieve this feat with such a dispersed team of 170 predominantly remote employees across Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada, France, USA, and more recently, the Philippines?
That’s a fair question!
Well, we're not going to keep that secret sauce to ourselves! Here’s how we achieved our Great Place to Work status:
Great Place To Work® is the global authority on workplace culture, employee experience, and leadership behaviors.
This prestigious certification is purely based on what our current employees say about their experience working at Karbon. It’s so thrilling to share that 90% of Karbonites said that Karbon is a great place to work—33 points higher than the average US company.
You can learn more about our certification here (spoiler: we scored very highly across all areas).
Maybe this is the classic HR guy in me, but I am so passionate about our values at Karbon. And I’m proud that while at most companies, employees can rattle off their values, here at Karbon, we know them deeper than that. They are us; they are what and how we do work every day.
Elevate our customers with excellence in everything we do: This is how we lead every single one of our interactions with our amazing and loyal customers. Accountants are the unsung heroes of the global economy, and it’s our role to advocate for them and elevate them.
Create extraordinary outcomes with insight and determination: At Karbon, we don’t settle for basic. Everything we do challenges the status quo in our quest to find better ways of serving our customers and the accounting industry.
Champion connectivity and embrace openness: We embrace visibility and open communication. We expect it from each other and express it through everything we do.
Make it happen with a passion for action: We get in and get things done. We don’t wait for tomorrow.
Be good to each other and act with authenticity: This is the value that defines the true DNA of a Karbonite. We are safe to be who we truly are. We celebrate our differences and accept that we won’t always agree—but that’s a natural part of the journey. We work through our challenges together and come out the other side stronger.
Most companies these days have a vision, mission, and values. But do they have a purpose? And can their employees articulate that purpose?
A company purpose was one of the first activities I championed here at Kabron. A good purpose was once described to me through an anecdote:
In 1962, during a visit to NASA, President Kennedy approached a man carrying a broom and said, “Hi, I'm Jack Kennedy, what are you doing?”
“Well, Mr. President,” the janitor responded, “I'm helping put a man on the moon.”
THAT is what you want all your employees to know and feel deeply. Everything they’re doing should be serving your firm’s purpose.
When thinking about your firm’s purpose, chat to your team, challenge them to be aspirational about what makes you world-class or what could make you world-class.
Think about how you’d pitch what you do to a potential future employee. Our purpose at Karbon is: Provide innovative tools, share knowledge and facilitate connectivity to empower firms to experience practice excellence.
This is what we do to make sure we have our eye on the prize with an aligned and motivated workforce.
Our CEO Mary Delaney and I were talking one weekend, and she walked through an analogy that has sat with me since. It was so simple.
She was drinking a Diet Coke and said that one of the key aspects of leadership is empowering and leading your team. She then moved the can from one spot on her desk to the other. “You can do that—move the can—yourself in an instant,” she said. “But that’s not scalable, nor does it demonstrate leadership. To truly be an inspirational leader, you need to engage your team members’ hearts and minds to want to move the can and believe in why we’re moving it.”
Now, the can of Diet Coke is just a symbol of something much greater. It’s a simple concept, but it’s powerful.
We often speak about leadership being critical, but we less often speak about how much it can truly impact everyone's lives beyond work.
Think about that leader who inspired you, coached you, and encouraged you—that one leader who you can say impacted not just your professional life but your personal life too. And on the flip side, whether we like it or not, bad leadership also seeps into our personal lives.
As an HR professional, my friends often come to me for advice about how to handle who they feel is a bad leader. For me, this is when I truly realize the impact leadership has: when you’re sitting around the dinner table with friends—not colleagues—discussing the implications of poor leadership.
It’s so important to treat your leaders well and train them to do the same with their team members.
We’ve invested heavily in leadership development at Karbon, running both our first Emerging Leaders Program alongside a Leadership Matters Program (for those who are leaders already). The aim is to help grow our internal talent to have a positive impact and empower our leaders to inspire and coach their team members to help move that Coke can.
As Mary said, “This certification is a testament to our entire team’s dedication to a strong, inclusive and high-performing culture, and the outstanding employee experience that we have invested in building.” I couldn’t agree more.
I am so passionate about these areas and always welcome any questions about achieving your own Great Place To Work Certification™. Please feel free to reach out to me for any advice: jourdan.pym@karbonhq.com.
In the meantime, I’ll proudly tell anyone and everyone who will listen that Karbon is truly a Great Place To Work.
Jourdan Pym
VP of People & Places, Karbon
Jourdan started his career in aviation and has since moved from leading Cabin Crew teams to partnering with leaders to provide sound, contemporary and impactful human resources support. Jourdan ensures an amazing employment experience for all Karbon team members while helping to future-proof the business with the right guidelines, procedures, and policies.
