Flipsnack Amplifies Communication and Performance Transparency with Help from 15Five

About
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.

Objectives

• Scale company culture, values, and collaboration amidst accelerated company growth.
• Increase employee performance and engagement through more frequent and meaningful communication.
• Expand objectives beyond personal growth to better align with team and company objectives.
• Maintain performance amidst an unexpected shift to fully remote teams.

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 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 allow for better collaboration and agility to aid innovation and growth.

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 really value are the “ready made question templates, which are really insightful and versatile,” she says.

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 team culture,” Janina says, “so High Fives help us maintain this key aspect of our 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 biweekly 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

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.

Regular conversations about individual performance

One of the most important changes Flipsnack has made to accommodate for growth 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, recognition, and more 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, it’s using department-level OKRs using Objectives in 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.

A more rewarding experience

Overall, Janina says Flipsnack’s experience with 15Five 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