How much do some Kasasa employees love working at the fintech?
Enough to get the Austin, Texas, company’s logo permanently tattooed on their body. The logo, known as The Patch, features a warrior’s mask surrounded by fire, and represents the company’s four key values: interdependence, five-star leadership, love and “badassitude.”
Granted, staff who get inked also receive $2,000 for doing so, but the offering — known as Pay to Ink — has proven popular enough that about 40 of the company’s 460 employees have gotten the tattoo. Moreover, Kasasa executives had to put stipulations in place, including requirements around the size and placement of the tattoo, and how soon staff become eligible for the payout.
“People sometimes get full sleeves — it’s amazing,” said Kirsten Longnecker, vice president of communications and B2B content. “Sometimes people get it within their first year, which I always feel, Wow, that’s commitment!”
Kasasa provides growth and technological services for small banks and credit unions and serves about 900 institutions nationwide.
Of course, employees have had fewer opportunities in the last year to show off those tattoos. Kasasa’s staff has been entirely remote since the pandemic began and no concrete plans are in place for when a transition back to the office will happen. While many organizations have voiced concerns about keeping company culture alive in a remote environment, Longnecker said Kasasa already had tools in place to facilitate that even before the pandemic began.
"We’re huge, huge Slack users,” she said.
The company quickly transitioned meetings and awards to virtual settings, but Slack channels, which allow one-on-one conversations or group chats, helped bridge the gap. Channels with names like “Plant people” allow distanced employees to connect based on personal interests, while the “Quaranteaming” channel has helped facilitate communication and education on coronavirus-related topics such as vaccines, community and financial support resources, and more.
Kasasa even created a channel called the Phalanx Relief Network to help employees struggling with the
“Employees were rescued,” Longnecker said. “Literally one writer had been alone without power for five days, and one of the other employees went over with his giant extended-cab truck, picked him up and took him someplace warm and safe.”
Even non-required events, such as happy hours, trivia and the weekly “Beer Thirty” on Friday afternoons, frequently draw as many as 30% of employees.
Kasasa’s workforce is about 60% male and 40% female, and while that figure has varied over the years, the company works hard to ensure opportunities are available for everyone. That includes an analysis a few years back to ensure women were being hired into management roles at the same pace as men.
Kasasa recently brought back a former vice president to oversee the launch of a diversity, equity and inclusion initiative, and it has a variety of groups aimed at ensuring diverse staffing groups are comfortable at the company and have opportunities to thrive. Among them are Ka-POW, the Kasasa Professional Organization of Women, and “Alphabet Soup,” a group for LGBTQ+ employees, which has participated in fundraisers for charity, marched in the Austin Pride Parade and more.
“What makes us so successful is that from the very top down, all of our culture and our values are not lip service, they are lived and demonstrated and modeled on the daily,” Longnecker said. “You know how at some organizations it’s ‘Do as I say, not as I do’? That’s not the case for us. We’re all living and breathing this, and our [core values] give everyone the right to call out a circumstance that may be risky or suggest an opportunity that may have been overlooked.”
Whenever the company reopens its offices, facilities have already been tweaked for post-pandemic life, including rearranging meeting rooms to allow for appropriate distancing, blocking off common spaces and placing tape on the floor to indicate one-way traffic.
Efforts to promote employee well-being will also continue. Like many companies, Kasasa provides a reimbursement for gym memberships, but there are some strings attached, including screenshots to track attendance, participation and payment.
“If you go at least 10 times per month, we cover a certain dollar amount,” Longnecker said. “You have to be there for at least 30 minutes — you can’t just go get a smoothie and go back out to your car. The purpose is to ensure employees are attending to their wellbeing in order to bring their best to work; a whole-person focus.”
