While radius financial group is used to winning awards, its honor as one of the Boston Globe's "2017 Top Work Places" was particularly coveted.
"Our goal is to offer complete customer satisfaction, and that starts with our most important customers, our associates," said CEO Sarah Valentini.
"Becoming a Top Workplace is a great way to attract and retain the best talent; after all, employees want to work at companies that operate by a strong set of values," says Doug Claffey, CEO of Energage, the company that hosts the Top Workplaces awards across the country.
Here are a few of the ways that radius continually works to preserve a culture that allows employees to consistently perform at their best.
Using employee satisfaction to drive customer satisfaction
Through methods like employee engagement app myradiusGO, radius hones in on employee attitudes to help continue its focus on employee-directed workplace advances. An anonymous baseline survey that garnered an impressive 93 percent response rate – one of the highest response rates seen to date - laid the groundwork. "Instead of choosing areas for improvement in a vacuum and guessing what's important, real-time data allows us to laser focus on one or two of the most crucial areas," says COO & Principal, Keith Polaski.
This year, the company also recruited a cadre of "Culture Ambassadors," a cross-divisional group of eight employees at all levels and layers of tenure, who have taken on the role of serving as "the eyes and ears" of the company. Rather than using a top-down approach where management comes up with ideas, the group meets monthly for healthy dialogue on a host of issues that are important to the larger employee population.
As these Ambassadors are seeded within the company as culture champions, they can help manage the "coffee bar talk" when something is being misunderstood and share up issues where employees need their voices to be heard.
Fueling individual success through transparency
A new addition to radius' suite of tech advances is radius360, a platform that optimizes business performance by providing data visualization, reporting, analytics and business intelligence. In radius' offices, a myriad of monitors continuously track various metrics related to how quickly and smoothly loans are moving through the pipeline. That information helps create transparency for employees surrounding the company's achievements and their individual performance.
And because individual feedback is critical to success, radius is moving away from annual reviews and instead encouraging leaders to offer more frequent feedback designed to foster continuous improvement through monthly 15-minute, one-on-one meetings.
Implementing these ongoing meetings allows employees and team leads to connect regularly for real-time performance feedback and identify needs for course correction or skills gaps that will improve individuals' career paths.
Offering the right work atmosphere
Of course a key part of being one of the best places to work is being one of the best places to work "in," which is why radius recently revamped its office space. The recent redesign created a clean, cool and casual open-space work environment, with a café, patio and plenty of gathering areas.
Creating a culture of fun
radius also knows that employees work harder when they're some place they want to be – and that any "best place to work" has to be a "fun place to work," as well. And the company shows it via a wide variety of initiatives that inject a dose of fun into the office, to refresh and recharge and build camaraderie and connections that will cultivate better communication and teamwork.
From Taco, Pizza and Ice-Cream Trucks to Yoga Wednesday, from spontaneous office dart battles to its own version of the pop culture favorite, Mannequin Challenge, the company embraces initiatives that promote both wellness and well-being – truly exemplifying the adage "Work hard, play hard."
"We like to say that every day is employee appreciation day, because everything we do is focused on our employees' satisfaction," says Polaski. "We know that our most important assets walk out the door every night. We can offer the best loan products and the most innovative technology out there but none of it counts without our people putting it into practice, and we know that by taking care of our employees, they in turn will take care of our customers."
In fact, at a recent radius rally, Valentini made a point to thank each associate for the key role they all play in customer service. "Even though our loan officers are the ones who see the customer satisfaction surveys, it's important that each and every person here realize how they individually contribute to our customer satisfaction and delivering on our mission of making mortgages better."
About radius financial group inc.
radius financial group inc. is a leading, private, full-service mortgage lender in New England consistently delivering quality financial services to its clients and referral partners since 1999. With a commitment to delivering a measurably better experience to borrowers, radius has been nationally and locally recognized for its continued growth and achievements. Headquartered in Norwell, MA, radius services Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maine, Connecticut and Florida, with offices in Mansfield, Marlborough, Waltham, West Springfield, Worcester and Bedford, NH. Visit us at www.radiusgrp.com or facebook.com/radiusgrp.
