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How We Can Be More Digitally Inclusive to Narrow the Digital Divide

By Rebecca A Mendoza In late 2015, I was job hunting when I came across a Digital Inclusion Officer job at a well-known social change charity in the UK. I had spent the previous few years working in digital marketing and desperately needed a change. I read through the job

What Does Diversity Look Like in the Workplace?

By Jibril Yassin In the past, we’ve talked about building inclusive workplaces, where staff can feel safe, supported, and valued. Diversity and inclusion go hand-in-hand with creating a Conscious Culture – in theory, diversity should reflect the communities workplace culture serve. It’s only been in recent years that employers

Four-Day Workweek: Where to Start

Implementing a four-day workweek may feel like a “let’s go scale Mt. Everest” type task. Where do you start? How do you feel confident you have covered all the ways this change impacts your team? You’ll want all senior leadership involved in the initial discussions and ensure you’

Women on Work

The working world can be a difficult place to navigate if you differ from the conventional idea of “who should be here”. That idea is particularly true for women and non-binary people entering male dominated fields, or management positions. Ask any woman you know and she’ll have a story

How to Build a Conscious Culture Across a Remote Team

By Lona Alia Conscious Culture is not just for the head office! The pandemic has been a game-changer in terms of remote work. 16 percent of companies are now fully-remote while 62 percent of employees now work remotely some of the time. Further, 85 percent of managers believe that remote

Conscious Culture: A World Changing Idea

Conscious Culture and our movement to make work better has been given an honorable mention in Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards. Announced today, the World Changing Ideas Awards honor clean technology, innovative corporate initiatives, brave new designs for cities and buildings, and other creative works that are supporting

How To Use Design Thinking to Build Conscious Culture

Part of the effort to codify and document Conscious Culture is to be the intangible tangible—to take some that’s often thought of as organic or fuzzy and make it something that we can change and improve. That’s why it’s helpful to look at other structures that

Heading back to the office? Don't forget these lessons from remote work:

In 2020 and 2021, companies throughout the world returned hours of their employees’ lives back to them. No, it didn’t require more overhead, nor did it mean cutting into the workweek. This change was driven by an external force: the global pandemic. In many cases, the hours returned came

Then and Now: Sex and Gender Representation in Technical Specifications

Conscious Culture is a Bolt initiative to balance execution with humanity and Bolt and so many other Conscious Culture companies are technology-driven companies. As a result, occasionally, we’ll bring you more technical discussions for your teams to discuss on how technology companies must apply the principles of a conscious

Should We Celebrate Employee Appreciation Day?

Feeling valued at work is important for both employees and their employers. Many initiatives have sprung up over the years to systematically prioritize employee appreciation and recognition including bonus schemes, ‘Employee of the Month’ programs, and Employee Appreciation Day. But what is it, and why is it important, and do

Our Four-Day Workweek Experiment

The topic of a four-day workweek inevitably raises the same questions every time it comes around. How does a four-day week work? Does it really work? By working less days do you work more hours? Conscious Culture decided to get to the bottom of these questions by speaking to a

Why The “Great Resignation” Can Yield More Conscious Cultures

By almost any available metric, we’re living through an unprecedented shift in work culture—or rather, a culture in which the idea of work itself is being questioned anew. There are statistics, of course: employment rolls and their monthly ups and downs; Bureau of Labor Statistics data about who

We're proud to be four-day workweek pioneers: A Q&A with Nexton

Nexton is a recruiting company that aims to champion the best Latin American technical talent and connect them to purposeful start ups around the world. As well as being a Conscious Company, Nexton recently announced they were moving to a four-day workweek. I had the pleasure to talk with Diego

Podcast: Why should companies adopt a remote first work structure?

Iwo Szapar is an author, remote work advocate who is shaping the future of remote & hybrid work as the CEO of Remote-how. This week on our podcast, Iwo and Heatherly talk about remote first workspaces, how to be an effective remote worker, and what the steps towards remote work

Podcast: What is compassion?

Scott Schute is the author of The Full Body Yes: Changing Your Work and Your World from the Inside Out. Scott is an executive coach, keynote speaker, and landscape photographer in addition to an author. He has over twenty years experience in business leadership roles, covering a range of company

Building a Good Company Culture Begins with your Values

Have you seen the movie Brittany Runs a Marathon? It’s incorrectly categorized as a comedy. It is more a drama with comedic moments that keep us watching during the awkwardness of people working on life. It is also about a woman who is struggling with her life and her

Ryan Breslow: “I’m trying to answer the most important company-building question”

The serial entrepreneur and CEO made his name by challenging status quo definitions and practices, and his new book–about how to recruit talented people today–is no exception. Ryan Breslow is a founder of multiple companies, including fintech company Bolt, the sponsoring company of Conscious Culture. I met Ryan

An Infusion of Inclusion: A Q&A with We Are Rosie

We Are Rosie is a global marketing services agency that believes that work can be better. Recently, they took the pledge to become a Conscious Company and I had the pleasure of chatting with Jessie Kernan, the Head of Product and Strategy at We Are Rosie. She shared We Are

The Advantages and Challenges of Bias in Tech

Building a Conscious Culture is, in part, recognizing that some of the things we regard as “defaults” are worth revisiting. In some ways, the whole idea of Conscious Culture is about challenging the status quo that work is supposed to be something you slog through. That’s a dated paradigm,

How to Build an Inclusive Workplace

Building an inclusive workplace is an important part of being a Conscious Company. Everybody wants to feel safe and supported in the environment where they spend the majority of their time. Prioritizing inclusion can no longer be an afterthought. But as with all aspects of Conscious Culture, inclusion isn’t

How a Founder’s Mentality Encourages Employee Recognition

Thinking like a founder is different than thinking like an employee. Whether they want to or not, a founder has some part of their identity wrapped up in the company. They feel praise and blame of the company more acutely; it’s on their minds all the time, even when

What Is a Good Company Culture?

Building a Conscious Culture is a purposeful act that organizations take to create a good company culture for their employees. But the question of what is a good company culture is a little more complex. The answer to that question is one of the most studied, discussed, thought-about, debated-over, and

If You’re Never Wrong, You’re Doing it Wrong

In the mid-1960s, Fred Smith was an undergraduate student polishing up an economics paper. He could see the computerized age coming and could see the world around him speeding up. In that world, he thought something would need to change—specifically, that packages would need to get from point A

The Benefits of a Four-Day Workweek

We’d all like to work less, right? But what if working less actually meant achieving more? The idea of a 4-day workweek isn’t new, with a movement advocating for a reduced workweek dating back to the 1970s, but it is a hot topic of debate again in 2021

"Strong Yes" Champions: The Secret to Successful Hiring

How to hire good employees is one of the age-old questions of building a business. From early-stage companies hiring their first employee to more established companies in the midst of scaling, making sure you find the best person for the job can feel like an impossible task. As more companies

How to Change Company Culture for the Better

Every company has a shared culture that is unique to that organization. Sometimes, companies build culture on purpose, spending time, money, and resources nurturing their culture. More often than not, company culture is an accident. At some point in every good company’s journey they will need to choose to

Podcast: What would happen if we communicated better?

Andrew Blotky is an experienced leader, strategic communicator, and expert in building and scaling teams and organizations, especially focused on leadership and vibrant, thriving cultures. Andrew has worked with well established Fortune 500 companies, startups during various growth stages, and charitable organizations globally. He's a lawyer and executive

Change Your Automated Mental Programming to Achieve Your Goals

By Alexandrea Day Humans are programmed to autonomously engage their environment both physically, mentally, and emotionally. The purpose for an automated response is for safety and secondarily for efficiency. Considering this, let’s look at how programming is affecting women, their lives, roles, and their success. Where does programming come

Podcast: How can companies fail during a turn around?

Lisa Gable is a WSJ Best Selling Author, Presidential, Secretarial, and Gubernatorial Advisor, U.S. Ambassador, UN Delegate, Corporate Executive, with Leadership at the Highest Levels of Business, Government, and Military Sectors, Board Member, Public Speaker, Commentator, Public Private Partnership Expert Lisa Gable has served four U.S. presidents and

Redesigning for Better Work Summit 2022

Conscious Culture hosted this gathering to explore the ways companies can redesign critical work structures of time and space and why these changes are part of the larger commitment to making work better for everyone. You’ll hear business leaders, researchers, and practitioners share stories that will inspire and frameworks

Accessibility is More Than Wheelchair Ramps

By Chloe Johnson Stella Young said it best: “No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp.” As society begins to, slowly, consider accessibility, ramps are often at the top of the list. Synonymous with disability in general media, they have become

Workshop: Designing time to make work less hectic and more fulfilling

We can design time, just as we design products and spaces. Some of history’s most noted scientists and creatives spent years tinkering with their working hours and routines, and discovered counterintuitive but science-based practices that helped them have more insights and better lives. Today, companies around the world are

Panel: Getting unstuck: how to make work work beyond place and time

Join a panel of leaders and practitioners as they have a lively discussion on the behaviors, structures, and group processes that you’ll need to move beyond the forced constructs of the past two years to an empowering new future of work. Moderator: Dr. Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author, founder, speaker,

Panel: Out of time: rethinking the work day

Work will fill the space you give to it. But more hours does not mean better work. Join business leaders for a discussion of how their companies are challenging the concept of “more is better.” From four-day workweeks to focused time and no meeting days, these companies are rethinking the

How accessibility initiatives benefit everyone

I caught COVID around a month ago. Luckily, I wasn’t too ill - just wiped out for a few days. The fever broke after three days, and the cough only lasted a week. A month later, though, my fatigue hasn’t shifted. I’ve spent more days than I’

Workshop: Creating empathy in the workspace

Empathy is the hot topic and in demand skill for leaders and managers at organizations in 2022. But how do you do this? How does empathy fit into a workspace where functional rational thinking has been valued over EQ skills for generations? This interactive workshop will clarify the role of

Workshop: Starting Culture Work

Whether your company is young with a blank slate or established with much history, you need a plan for how to start your culture work. Come explore how applying best practices from the technology implementation discipline can help your teams be more successful in culture work. Hosted by: Heatherly Bucher,

Workshop: This could have been an email

My name is Tim Hickle, and I hate meetings. Well, let me rephrase. I hate ineffective meetings. The problem is, so many of them are so gosh-darn ineffective that it’s hard not to hate them all. So, I did the most natural thing to do when you hate something…

Workshop: Redesigning for balance and energy

Redesigning work can be enhanced with a greater sense of who we are and what’s important to us. Issues like work/life balance and how our energy changes throughout the day can become design parameters that we can assess and work with. Join this session to collaborate with others,

Workshop: Making a difference with active listening

As individuals start to consider the future of work, active listening skills will be essential in helping individuals feel heard, validated, and connected to one another. Listening is one of our most challenging activities and an art form that requires considerable practice throughout one’s life. This workshop focuses on

Panel: Why do this culture thing?

What kind of investment do you need to make in company culture and is it worth it? Learn why companies make the commitment to make work culture a priority and how it pays off. Moderator: Heatherly Bucher, Executive Director, Conscious Culture Panelists: Jennifer Christie, Chief People Officer, Bolt Erica Plybeah,

Panel: Places and Spaces : where does work happen

The four walls defining where much work happens have fallen. Join in on this conversation about where work happens–office, hybrid, remote-first, anywhere–and leaders who think it’s not only inevitable but could be the best thing that has happened to strengthen company cultures and make work truly better

What We Learned About Work in 2021 – and What it Means Moving Forward

People are opting out. Work itself is being questioned. More people are now re-evaluating all things work they once accepted without thought, from schedules, environment, and expectations to compensation, career advancement, and recognition. To borrow from Malcom Gladwell, we’ve reached a tipping point, a convergence of societal forces, technology

Podcast: How can cognitive empathy make us better at work?

Rob Volpe talks to Heatherly Bucher about cognitive empathy, and our collective empathy crisis, to find out how caring more about others can make us better at work. The full transcript can be found below: Listen to to the podcast The podcast can be found on Anchor, Spotify, Amazon, Google

Podcast: What do we need to change before we reach a universal four-day workweek?

Dr Alex Soojung-Kim Pang talks with Heatherly Bucher about four-day workweeks, how we can all work less, and what obstacles we still need to overcome before society adopts a universal four-day workweek. The full transcript can be found below: Listen to the podcast The podcast is available on Anchor, Spotify,

Bolt’s Conscious Culture: Culture Playbook

What is a Conscious Culture? Introduction When building something great, team and culture are just as important as strategy and product. Every company will say they have a great culture and point to their values listed on a wall. But culture is not simply a list of values. Culture is

Managing our team

How To Be A Great Manager Everyone deserves an exceptional manager. Managers play a vital role in the success of an organization. Like any skill, it’s a learned craft that takes time and dedicated effort to master. Research consistently shows that the success of managers is the greatest indicator

Manager’s Guide To Compensation & Promotion

Promotion Philosophy Like hiring, try to continually raise the bar when it comes to promotions. In order to do that, employ a team based approach that makes the direct manager an advocate, but not a final decision maker. A Promotion Committee will collectively review and approve promotions on a bi-annual

Performance Reviews

Performance Review Philosophy Learning and growth are a central part of culture, as exhibited by the“United and Unique” operating value. Learning and growth are critical to our company’s success and employees can improve through ongoing feedback, clear development paths, and mentorship from your managers and team members. In

Setting Goals and Tracking Performance

OKR Overview and Process Objectives Objectives are the goals. They tell the company where to go. Key Results They align with objectives and tell the company how you’ll get there. Example: We sell barbecues online. Objective: We want to grow revenue to 1 million this quarter. Key Results: * Rank

Making Decisions

Decision Making Philosophy A company’s value is no more than the sum of the decisions it makes and executes — and the quality of decision making is as important as executing on those decisions. A company’s assets, capabilities, and structure are useless unless team members throughout the organization make

Remote Work Best Practices

Working Remotely: Tips and Resources Many of the tips and resources in this section draw from Facebook and their Working Remotely: How We Make It Work, and Remote Work Tips guidance. They are intended to help you do your best work, wherever you’re working. Browse the full playbook: Bolt’

Feedback

*This playbook is directly inspired by Matt Mochary’s philosophy on “Feedback”* Browse the full playbook: Bolt’s Tactical Application of a Conscious CultureOur mission, vision, and values guide how we think about ourselves as a company and as teammates. But on a practical, tactical level, we want to create

Meeting Guide

Calendar Cadence Maker vs Manager’s Schedule. Paul Graham (YCombinator) famously pointed out that Makers (such as engineers, sales teams or digital marketers) need long stretches of uninterrupted time to be productive, while Managers are most effective when meeting, because their role is to create the flow of information. In

Working Together

The way we work together is as important as the way we work with our customers. Below are some guidelines for good communication at Bolt. Browse the full playbook: Bolt’s Tactical Application of a Conscious CultureOur mission, vision, and values guide how we think about ourselves as a company

Building The Bolt Team

Hiring A Players The People Companies take immense pride in the teams they build, and it’s been shown that A players attract A players. This will help aid in building a kick-ass (strong, diverse, hard-working, creative, collaborative, and mission-driven) team! An organization’s values, culture, and team will attract

Bolt’s Tactical Application of a Conscious Culture

Our mission, vision, and values guide how we think about ourselves as a company and as teammates. But on a practical, tactical level, we want to create an environment that encourages Bolters to live Conscious Culture every day. Below we’ve outlined various ways that the Conscious Culture Foundational Principles

What is conscious culture and why do we need it?

It’s no secret that your company is only as good as your people, and your people are only as good as the teams they work within. Great teams can only exist with great cultures. Culture is a buzzword that’s often thrown around in times of change and is