Rablab fosters a culture of employee well-being with Workleap Officevibe

After years of working for companies where the employee experience fell to the bottom of the list of corporate priorities, Jean-Philippe Dauphinais knew that there had to be a better way for organizations to remain successful without compromising the well-being of their employees.

Armed with a background in sales and entrepreneurship, coupled with a keen interest in the world of marketing, Dauphinais enlisted his long-time friend, Nicolas Rabouille, to explore ways in which they could help businesses grow through different digital transformation initiatives.

What began as a two-person operation in Dauphinais’ basement in 2016, has burgeoned into a flourishing web marketing agency, Rablab, specializing in search engine optimization, paid search strategies, social media marketing, and results-driven programmatic advertising with over 30 employees.

While the Montreal-based company keeps growing, Dauphinais and Rabouille’s commitment to providing their people with an exceptional employee experience has remained steadfast. We spoke to Dauphinais, Co-Founder, and CEO, about how Workleap Officevibe has helped Rablab build a culture rooted in employee engagement and well-being from the very beginning.  

When and why did you introduce Workleap Officevibe at Rablab?

When we started Rablab, we wanted every new hire to have a voice. We wanted to be transparent with our numbers and in everything we did, and we especially wanted our people to be along for the journey. We intended to have a tight-knit community from the get-go.

In 2018, we met and chatted with some of the team from Workleap Officevibe at a trade show. Back then, a tool for the employee experience was really “out there.” It made us realize that when we were asking our team how they were feeling, they weren’t giving us the full picture because employees don’t usually feel comfortable expressing their concerns and giving you the cold hard truth to your face.

After that event, we introduced Workleap Officevibe to start getting honest feedback from our team to see how we could improve their overall experience.

How did your employees react to having to use Workleap Officevibe?

Funny enough, it was not well-received at first. When we first introduced it, we were about six or eight people, and the team thought we were trying to “spy” on them, even though the surveys were anonymous. I think that’s a fear for many people because we went from speaking casually in meetings to having these scheduled surveys where we collected data.

To help ease their concerns, we sat down with our employees and asked them how they wanted us to implement Workleap Officevibe from that point on. We asked them how they would feel about doing a two-to-three-question weekly Pulse Survey and how it would affect their perception of the work we were doing together. We tried to be thoughtful about this when we first spoke to them.

We took the time to educate and inform our employees on how we use the tool. We would still have meetings, but we also needed to keep having these smaller touchpoints to help guide us and show us what we were doing well and what we could do better. We reinforced the notion that their information was secure and anonymous on the platform and that the data we collected from these surveys helped us make informed decisions to improve their day-to-day lives at work.

How has Workleap Officevibe helped address challenges at Rablab?

What helps shape our decision-making is the feedback section after the Pulse Survey questions. We look at two things in particular. First, we look at our scores for recognition, satisfaction, alignment, etc., across our different teams. We set a minimum score for ourselves so that we don’t fall below our standard. This data helps us look at things objectively and mathematically to see where we can make changes.  

I see Workleap Officevibe as an easy-to-use, low-cost, and highly efficient solution for your business.

Jean-Philippe Dauphinais

We then take the time to really go through the individual comments and feedback that people leave. Our HR representative fills me in weekly, highlighting recurring questions or comments, and we flag what’s positive, negative, and constructive. Sometimes there’s a ton to discuss, and other times there’s less, but having these pillars of questions helps us identify what we should focus on.

Can you share some of the insights you’re most proud of?  

We’re really proud of our employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS). Unfortunately, the digital marketing industry average is quite low, hovering around 24. That means that a lot of people are just logging in at their jobs and collecting their pay cheques, but their relationship with their company ends there. Rablab has a score of 88*, which means morale is high. We’re so happy to have people promoting the company like this and speaking highly of Rablab outside the organization.

Did the way you use Workleap Officevibe change with the shift to remote work?

There were so many things to manage in the early days of the pandemic that Workleap Officevibe wasn’t at the top of our priorities, but in hindsight, it should have been considering it helps you track if your people are happy.

We started doubling down on our Workleap Officevibe usage because we weren’t used to the fully remote context yet, and one of the only ways to see how our people were doing was through the Pulse Surveys feedback they left. We usually had high participation rates, but in the early stages of the pandemic, we were hitting 100% participation.

In the winter of 2020, our “relationship with manager” metric took a bit of a hit, but we are now at 9.3/10*. We’ve developed a strong and open communication channel between management and their employees, but in those uncertain early days, people were afraid and were not speaking to each other. Things have changed a lot since then.

What do you like best about Workleap Officevibe?  

The ease of usability. It’s really freaking easy to use. Workleap Officevibe can help you find pressure points, things that hurt the company or your people, or see comments you might not have seen before because now they’re anonymous.

Once you start really using it, it just gets better and better because the data you collect helps you make informed decisions on how to improve the employee experience.

Jean-Philippe Dauphinais

As a manager, you only need to ensure that your people are filling in their surveys and engaging with the platform. Then, of course, respond to feedback with action. The integration with Slack also makes things smoother. I see Workleap Officevibe as an easy-to-use, low-cost, and highly efficient solution for our business. And from a manager’s standpoint, the dashboard is so intuitive. The analysis, comparisons, questionnaires, and feedback are all made simple for the user.

*As of June 2022