February 2019, by John Gieryn
What if the purpose of companies was “to create benefit for the world and try to make it a better place”? Or if they had “employee happiness” as a key performance indicator? While it may seem far-fetched at first, we at Loomio have the privilege of serving one such company that is leading the way and showing how businesses can make a meaningful and sustainable contribution to our communities.
mondora is a software services company and a benefit corporation. They care about how their software products are being crafted and used, considering how both people and planet are impacted. For example, they track the paper (and trees) that are saved in the use of their application that allows banks to easily keep digital records.
mondora role models creating benefit for the world and its workers
Their social impact extends beyond outward acts, mondora proposes to change how work is done in Italy by demonstrating a way of working where employees may choose to be as remote as they like and have flexible hours. mondora believes in creating value for their community of workers as well as the world.
mondora was founded with these values in 2002. As they grew from 10 to 60 employees in the last 7 years, they evolved their ways of working to better fulfill their purpose. They have developed a culture of openness and transparency and a flatter organisational hierarchy. They have implemented tools, such as Loomio, so that anyone can share their ideas and everyone decides together.
Loomio helps move discussions to clear outcomes and action
Kirsten Ruffoni, mondora’s Benefit Officer, spoke to a number of the obstacles mondora was facing prior to adopting Loomio. She shared how “discussions would occur but nothing would happen”. With people working remotely and on flexible hours, it was “hard to move the conversation to a conclusion”, and, generally, “hard to keep a conversation going as you always run into different people at the office”.
Kirsten reported that they’ve come a long way in this regards, and Loomio has played a role. “Decisions that used to take months now take a week”, Kirsten told me. mondora takes full advantage of the variety of voting and decision tools that Loomio offers and appreciates not losing messages on Slack and-unlike email-having the ability to indicate deadlines to increase accountability.
Kirsten described a challenging decision that was made on Loomio: making the salaries of mondora transparent to everyone in the company. The CEO had some reservations, but decided to use Loomio to consult everyone in the company. After the input-unanimously in favor-the CEO decided to trust the group and implement the policy. Not only did nothing bad happen, but they were able to do something really positive in the eyes of everyone in their company. They identified, and fixed, a pay gap between women and men, establishing equal pay for equal work. Kirsten commented, “Loomio makes it easier to voice our opinions in front of our boss”. Using asynchronous decision-making tools can make it easier to have thoughtful conversations and hard decisions, whether the team is remote or meeting regularly in person.
Loomio supports collaboration between organisations and across teams
mondora has also been using Loomio to bring customers into the design process to produce better results and strengthen relationships. They involve customers in the process as early as possible and establish open communication between their customer and every person on the team.
Beyond supporting internal communication and decision-making, Loomio allows mondora to invite guest users into specific threads or groups; mondora uses this to improve their interactions with investors and university researchers. According to Kirsten, Loomio supported mondora to “get information they weren’t expecting from stakeholders.”
After acquisition by TeamSystem, a larger IT company, mondora has introduced Loomio as a decision-making tool within TeamSystem’s R&D department.
In their efforts to better the world and cultivate employee happiness, mondora is leading Italy and others into a future of work where there is a new model of employment-a “new employee” where all workers can fully participate with flexibility, remote work, and effective communication and decision-making. mondora leverages Loomio to get better outcomes with less time and effort, supporting every employee to fully participate in all aspects of the business and to deepen their interactions with customers. Want to create more benefit in the world? Look to mondora as a valuable example. You can hear more stories about mondora on their blog.
Try Loomio for free, and learn more, at loomio.org.
