Building a global culture: How Caseware connects employees serving customers across 130 countries

"We're transforming the accounting profession", says Kate Muller, Caseware’s chief people officer. "Our goal is to help accountants do their job better than ever before." But how does this ambitious mission translate into fostering a global culture?

Creating a unified company culture across continents is a formidable challenge. But for Caseware, a global cloud-based technology company, it's a challenge it has embraced and conquered. With just under 1,000 employees serving customers across 130 countries Caseware has managed to build a cohesive global culture that resonates deeply with its diverse workforce. The secret sauce? A combination of innovative strategies, deep-rooted values and a relentless focus on communication.

Caseware’s core values – 'many voices, one team', 'innovation with impact' and 'powered by trust' – serve as the foundation for its global culture. "These values are more than just words on a wall," Muller emphasises. "They guide our daily operations and interactions."

To bring these values to life, Caseware uses a variety of collaboration tools and social interactions. "We host game nights, local events and even algorithmic coffee chats to foster personal connections," Muller shares. These initiatives not only make remote work more engaging but also build a sense of community.

Work Talk from The People Space · Building Unity Across Borders: Insights from Caseware's CPO Kate Muller

Advice for HR leaders

So, what can HR leaders learn from Caseware’s approach? Here are some tips from Muller to foster a cohesive culture across geographic boundaries:

Cultivate a feedback and coaching culture

• Regular, open feedback helps new team members feel welcome and valued
• Implement a robust coaching programme to support continuous development
• In performance management equal weight for what was achieved and how it was achieved

Highlight regional uniqueness

• Celebrate local holidays and achievements to acknowledge diverse backgrounds
• Use internal newsletters and social platforms to share stories from different regions.

Diverse recognition methods

• Offer various recognition programmes, from shout-outs to peer-nominated awards
• Ensure recognition is timely and relevant to reinforce company values

Innovation is at the heart of Caseware’s strategy. "We use technology not just to enable work but to enhance it," Muller explains. Tools like algorithmic coffee chats pair employees from different regions for virtual coffee breaks, fostering cross-border friendships and collaborations.

Employee wellbeing is another critical focus. Caseware has embraced wellness programmes and mental health initiatives to support its remote workforce. "We recently rolled out a wellness programme through Virgin Pulse," Muller notes. "It’s been great to see our teams engage and support each other’s wellbeing."

Meeting people where they are

One of the most significant challenges for any global company is integrating new acquisitions. Caseware’s approach is to meet people where they are. "We focus as much as possible in the due diligence process to understand what that current culture is, how that is going to align and to learn as much as possible about the people in order  to understand how those parallels align with our company and how nuanced we want to make that integration plan to make it successful, " Muller says. "We take a minute to pause and understand what method would really make sense to those team members and also what time. Sometimes it takes a year to bring a company culture together."

Leading a geographically dispersed team requires a specific skill set. Muller highlights the importance of change management and communication. "You can’t over-communicate," she insists. "It’s crucial to ensure everyone is aligned and feels included, especially during times of change."

Looking ahead, Caseware is focusing on trends like AI and automation, which promise to transform the HR landscape. "AI offers a great opportunity to free my HR team from some of those most routine practices so they can get into the more complex work and lead innovation," Muller observes. However, she stresses the need for a healthy balanced approach, particularly regarding wellbeing.

As Muller says, building a global culture is not just about aligning on business strategies and financial goals; it's about creating an environment where every employee feels connected and valued.  Want to dive deeper into these strategies? Listen to our full Work Talk podcast episode with Kate Muller and watch the video above for more insights. 

About Kate Muller

Kate Muller is a seasoned global human resources leader with more than 14 years of progressive experience in people strategy, talent management and employee capabilities. Currently serving as chief people officer at Caseware, she is responsible for building and cultivating a strong global culture and community. 

Before joining Caseware Muller was senior HR business partner for global product and engineering at Squarespace, supporting a diverse workforce of 715 employees across the US and Europe.

With a Master's degree in dispute resolution focusing on employee and labor relations from Wayne State University, Muller has built a career partnering with c-suite executives to drive organisational success through strategic HR initiatives. Her expertise spans various areas including performance management, succession planning, employee engagement and change management.

Transcript

Scaling from a national to a truly global organisation

We were an organisation with a global presence from a customer perspective for many years, 30 plus years as a Canadian based organisation.

And when I joined, and a number of the executive team joined, we were faced with the opportunity to then become, I always say, an overnight global organisation. And so bringing our culture together with not only a new brand to the market was an opportunity for us to really learn about ourselves as an organisation, the impact and the innovation we made in the industry as Caseware for decades - and then who is Caseware now in the new landscape. 

So a little bit about Caseware. So we're a cloud based technology company. We're really helping to transform the accounting profession and enabling accountants to really do their job better than they've ever had before. We are global. We've been around for a long time, 36 years, over half a million customers and operating in about 130 countries from a customer perspective. We are highly, regulated as a profession, if you could imagine, so it's very specific for every country. 

The global nature of our business allows us to equip our customers with technology that really keeps pace. And a little bit about Caseware. So we're just under a thousand team members around the world. we're everywhere from Canada, UK, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Columbia. So we have a presence in most of the regions.

Building a shared culture across regions and acquisitions

So how did we make sure that One Caseware resonated? So this is actually one of those moments that we had a bit of a lesson learned. It was very important for us that we had a One Caseware internal marketing campaign, if you will.

Part of that was intentional because we went through such a change with our branding externally. So it was really important that we had an understanding of what is Caseware now in this new chapter for us. So that was critically important. And then also through the number of acquisitions it was important that we were really clear on who we are as an organisation because we were welcoming so many team members into our kind of new organisation really. 

But from a lesson learned perspective we have employee engagement surveys, and we do that continuously to make sure that we have that pulse track of the organisation. And it was through this feedback directly from our team members were saying, I hear One Caseware, I actually super resonate with the strategy. We got top marks for that. But the areas of opportunity were the recognition and understanding of us from a regional perspective. And it was this great aha moment of 'many voices one team', which is one of our values and are we doing enough to actually recognise the many voices we have to then come together as One Caseware.

So this last year we've been having a greater emphasis on specifically highlighting team members from all over the world, whether it's a regional holiday that may be not known globally to what is a team specifically doing in a local market and the way that we've collaborated together to address that kind of market need from a customer perspective.

Why recognition matters in global organisations

And there's lots of examples I can go through, but it was taking that kind of regional focus, ultimately, to serve the One Caseware and I think that, well we're going to have the next engagement survey coming up, but I think through the engagement we've had and the number of people raising their hand to also highlight and share examples of the kind of One Caseware from a regional level, it's been really exciting to see.

And it's been cool to see the feedback in action, if you will, and embracing One Caseware in a way that really demonstrates our value of 'many voices one team'. So it was a great opportunity and lesson learned for us.

But we have focused on recognition and had an intentional focus on creating recognition in a very inclusive way and emphasising the many forms that recognition can take knowing that our team members might have different appreciation for different types of recognition.

And I think that's really critical for any kind of recognition programme. We know that recognising employees and their hard work is one of the most powerful and cost effective methods for not only attracting talent, but that retention as well, from an organisation perspective. So we focus on, it could be as straightforward, right, as shout outs to team members. We can use our technology, our slack platforms, our emails, things like that. Absolutely encourage that from the kind of the more point-in-time recognition. But we also have other recognition programmes such as, we do a most valuable team member programme here.

That's peer nominated, very intentionally peer nominated. Of course, there's a little bit of a vetting process. Any HR programme has one, but it's truly focused on team members recognising team members and that goes into a kind of a, at the end of the year, a big recognition award. So it's one of our, biggest recognitions.

We also have then a peer-nominated team award as well if you see a team collectively working together. That has really resonated with our team members. Both of MVP and, but specifically our team member award, has really resonated with team members. And it's those opportunities to not only recognise the teams or the individuals, but then take the opportunity to share that broadly.

So we use our e-newsletter. We use Slack. We use all those things to make sure that there is different levels of recognition and we're sharing that across the organisation in ways that the team members feel the most recognised or resonates with them.

How values show up in performance and feedback

When we go through our performance management process we equally weigh the performance outcome, so what was achieved throughout the year but it's an equal weight of how it was achieved. So, when we go through our performance programme the individuals talk about that and what was achieved and how it was achieved and we have leaders acknowledge and provide feedback in those aspects as well.

And so, when we go through our performance management or our year and annual review process, it's equal weight put on both what was achieved and how it was achieved. And for us that's where that those values come to life. So knowing the great work that team members put out, it's also 'how' it was.

How are you collaborating with your team members? How are you communicating? Is it effective? Is it aligned with the values and the core behaviours that we expect as part of the organisation and the opportunity to share that feedback directly with the team member because this is where the recognition really takes form and the accountability to the team members. So it's important. 

It's important also just, for the team members that are demonstrating the values, that those team members that aren't quite there yet or maybe need a little bit more support to really truly meet the full expectations of performance but also the cultural aspects ,that those team members, you see that progress over time and you see that feedback taking place and that's an important part of that kind of recognition and retention as well.

Reinforcing culture through collaboration and connection

It's a great question on how we really reinforce that culture, especially through all of the acquisitions and being so geographically diverse.

So we make sure people are enabled with the tools to do their job effectively but we go beyond that and we're really also focusing on the collaboration, the brainstorming and also the importance of social interactions. So game nights at different sites, lunch, breakfast, our local off sites, and just the importance on the frequency of those connections across the organisation. I can't emphasise that importance of that collaboration and the focus on the inclusivity nature of our kind of One Caseware organisation and just the highlighting the uniqueness across all of our regions.

So we use tools in the sense of creating buddy systems. Very intentionally creating buddy systems cross divisions or cross country to make sure that team members really feel the sense of being a global organisation. We host both global and virtual events and really emphasise the participation from team members all over the world.

Things like walking challenges or, walking challenges was a big one where we had team members join each other's walking challenges where somebody is walking up a mountain in one country and then down the city street of another on the same team. And it's been really cool to see that, and just emphasise that global nature and the fact that our world's much smaller because of the technology and tools that we can bring together.

Virtual coffee chats, although you can bring tea or any beverage of your choice. It doesn't have to be coffee but we have a strong leading preference towards it. And it's part of kind of an onboarding experience, very intentionally bringing team members together in a kind of coffee chat. So lower that barrier of having to. Reach out across the organisation to connect. So bringing that together, lowering that barrier and just saying, Hey, here's a little coffee date, go and get to know your colleague. And it's been really helpful to learn about each other in a kind of more of a social way but then also share what do you do here at Caseware and really give people the opportunity to praise the work that they're doing to contribute to the success of the company. So, it ticks a lot of the boxes for us and we love them. 

Practical lessons for HR leaders managing global growth

I love a top three list so I'm happy to share some tips. I think for me the number one, especially if you're going through a lot of acquisitions, I mentioned it before, but communication. But not only communication. If you think about the importance that leaders play in terms of any company culture but especially that welcoming nature of an integration experience, is that focus on that feedback and coaching culture.

So, if a team is looking, if you're welcoming new team members through an integration, really underscoring giving and receiving feedback really well and creating that open environment to share feedback. I think that's really important. And I think it sets off that relationship on the right foot when you're joining the organisation. 

I would also, I know we mentioned also about how do we highlight the uniqueness of different cultures? And so what we have done is then embrace the unique voices that we have around the organisation. So, I'd say the second tip is learning your people and highlighting the fantastic uniqueness of the team members across their different regions.

And that's been really that's something that we've been working on and we're going to continue to work on year after year of just highlighting the cool unique aspects of our team members across the organisation and share it, whether that's in a newsletter, whether that's in slack, whether that's in any kind of recognition platform that you have.

but that's had been really exciting to learn those team members and hey, you might have a connection with somebody in a different country that maybe you've never been to and that's really fun. That's community building more organically. 

And then speaking of ecognition, the last, I think, is recognition. That's really, really important and having a variety of recognition tools to also meet people where they are. So we're working really hard. We're a technology company, we're moving really fast. And so the ability to recognise those team members and the achievement of their outcomes or people demonstrating our values and demonstrating our culture and the opportunities to really recognise that goes tenfold, not only for the team member that's getting that recognition but for the culture across the organisation, driving that accountability and that acknowledgement of the hard work. So those are the top three that I would say.