Koala created consistent communications automated by Pyn during high growth

A global company focused on socially and environmentally conscious products and processes, Koala is dedicated to changing the way people buy and enjoy furniture. 

Koala experienced massive growth in 2020, nearly doubling the size of its workforce. With teams dispersed across Australia, Japan, the United States, Brazil, and Korea, Koala’s People and Culture (P&C) team needed a way to automate their internal communications for scale, particularly within the company’s pre-onboarding and onboarding processes.

Netta Efron, Koala’s Global Director, People and Culture and Alexis Wood, Global Senior Manager, Culture & Engagement, share how Pyn has improved the company’s efficiency and communications planning.

Challenge: Consistent communication among quick pivots and high turnover 

In Koala’s flexible, hybrid, and globally distributed workplace, communication is crucial. As Netta explains, with employees spread out across the globe, consistent messaging and appropriate context surrounding key information, particularly when it comes to changes or pivots, is important.  

“We move super fast, change priorities, shift things,” says Netta, “How we communicate the changes and the pivots is quite critical.”

Netta also recognized the connection between high-quality communication and employee retention. Like many start-ups, Koala has experienced high turnover rates, particularly over the past few years. 

“The way in which we communicate — what we say, how we say it, and when we say it, is of utmost importance. Our aim is to ensure that every member of the team feels included in the journey. This has a significant impact on an employee's experience within the organization and has the potential to influence their level of trust in both leaders and the organization as a whole,” Alexis explained. 

She also acknowledged the crucial role of effective communication in times of organizational change, which can significantly impact an employee's success and ultimately their longevity with the company.

Koala had incorporated an onboarding platform provider into their tech stack, but Netta and her team recognized the limitations of the tool and the need for a more robust solution that could scale alongside the growth of their business.

Netta was on the lookout for a better way to keep up with important employee communications at various touchpoints, especially during key moments beyond their initial onboarding. That's when she came across Pyn.

Pyn’s content library and the maturity of the overall employee journey made it the clear choice. Netta adds, “I could immediately feel the trust with the brand and what it was bringing into the equation.”

Solution: Automated and personalized communications 

Shortly after the first demo, Koala was ready to start using Pyn. Currently, Netta and the P&C team are using Pyn to optimize their pre-onboarding and onboarding processes and will begin building a template library to automate messaging for special moments.

Pyn’s content library has quickly proven to be as helpful as Netta expected. "It's so well written and we feel it's so aligned with the things that we want and are important to us,” she says. “It just makes communicating with the entire team so easy."

Onboarding 

The P&C team has been leveraging Pyn's extensive library of employee communications to support employees' onboarding journeys. They’ve also added their pre-existing content into the Pyn library. Being able to incorporate their previous communication assets allows for better personalization of the employee onboarding experience—for example, by tailoring onboarding for their customer service team or providing the right content as individual teams scale.

“Before the person even starts, we’re introducing them to the business and trying to learn about them. That's part of the templates we have in Pyn,” says Netta. “It's more about getting to know the employee's personality…we're collecting crumbs along the way throughout that pre-onboarding process and trying to get new hires excited. It's always very successful.”

Alexis adds that after digging into data from company-wide Engagement Surveys, they knew that the first few months of a joey's experience (aka their "newbies") were make or break. “With our current hybrid work model, it's even more critical to create opportunities for connection. That's where our Pyn buddy system comes in — every joey gets matched up with a cool Koala in the business who can help them level up and enrich their experience. It's like having a go-to pal, a built-in-bud who they can lean on and who they might not have crossed paths with otherwise," she explains.

Special Moments

Netta understands the role company culture plays in employee satisfaction and retention. The P&C team wants to recognize special moments in their employees’ lives by personalizing communications for birthdays and promotions. Without the resources to dedicate a team to tackle these messages individually, Netta is grateful to efficiently craft and automate these messages with Pyn.

The team also plans to build messaging around holidays and other special events. A recent Invasion Day campaign combined Koala’s communications from the previous year with relevant YouTube videos and other resources from the content library. "I think the fact that there's content there and examples really help," says Netta. “It made an impact on those people who opened it and read it - a few reached out and gave us positive feedback on the message.”

Results: Proactive Planning and Increased Engagement  

Before working with Pyn, the P&C team had great communications ideas they wanted to build out—but didn’t always have the time to put together effective, comprehensive campaigns. Now, because of Pyn’s content library (complete with examples and templates), they are able to not only work more efficiently, but also support the company’s long-term goals.

"The ability to personalize employee communications using the content in Pyn is something that is going to be crucial to how we're able to retain employees and get through so much of the things that, as a business we want to," says Netta—like decreasing turnover, increasing engagement, and increasing year-over-year growth.

And with those kinds of results, the P&C team has no plans to go back to their pre-Pyn strategy.

“At this point, turning off Pyn would feel like going back to the Middle Ages,” said Netta.

Future Plans

So what’s next? Now that they’ve experienced how Pyn can optimize their employee onboarding, Netta and the P&C team are excited to explore everything else the platform has to offer, with plans to:

• Extend their onboarding content beyond the employee’s first six months to include more specific communications around career pathways and development
• Automate comms regarding engagement surveys and quarterly performance reviews 
• Build out resource materials and training for managers (Visit Pyn’s library for our guide to manager training and development at high-growth companies - including all of our automated comms for managers).