Another year of taking care of each other at BOF.

Another year has come and gone, and our 2021 Great Place to Work survey results are in. For four years, we have invested in the GPTW certification process as a means to gather feedback on where to focus our efforts around employee culture and trust.

We’ve shared before about how impactful it was hitting our A Team score, and the steps we took to get there. When our 2021 survey rolled around this summer, we had some concerns our scores would drop. Adapting to pandemic life has been difficult for everyone. Our team has been working remotely since March of 2020, alongside babies, kids, spouses, pets and all kinds of unexpected distractions and disruptions. Collectively, we are experiencing a level of isolation unlike any time in modern history. COVID has become a part of our “new normal,” affecting each of us in different ways at work and at home.

So when our results rolled in, we were surprised and excited to discover that despite the struggles of living through a second year of a pandemic, our company culture remains strong. 100% of employees at Brains On Fire, Inc. say it is a great place to work compared to 59% of employees at a typical U.S.-based company. Our overall average score, taking every question into account, stayed steady at 92. It’s a big deal to maintain scores in such tumultuous times, and we definitely felt this was worthy of a celebration.

Over the past year, we took actionable steps to address and adapt to a world that felt like it was also changing and challenging us daily:

We wanted to be intentional about time spent staring at technology, so we took Friday afternoons off as a company. This provided a buffer to reset our brains before the weekend, and created a necessary division between our personal and professional lives.

We practiced extra grace, allowing time and space for all the emotions we experienced as our country and world saw heavy events layering on top of an already amorphous end to the pandemic.

We sent our employees care packages filled with supplements from one of our favorite B Corporations, Organic India, who we learned about at the start of COVID when they gave away free immunity kits.

We hosted virtual lunches and coffee dates with munching encouraged. And while our virtual cocktail holiday party didn’t hold a candle to our in-person celebrations, it sparked the spirit in the midst of a holiday season that can, at the very least, be described as “pretty wonky.”

We even participated in virtual and drive-by baby showers, celebrating the arrival of several BOF babies. (A reminder how much we miss the precious act of holding a baby in our arms.)

Each of these actionable steps helped us live out our core value, We Take Care of Each Other. A full year of the pandemic challenged us to adapt and innovate on how we live out that value when times are tough — and we’re stronger for it. Here’s hoping that things will look a lot different in 2022, but one thing that is sure to remain the same is our focus on caring for our people, always finding ways to keep doing better and our commitment to remaining a workplace that “100% of employees say is a great place to work.”