Kafi Payne knows that “caring about your people” comes off like meaningless HR-speak if a company doesn’t put in the honest effort to actually get to know its employees. As Teleport's Human Resources Director, she wanted to show instead of tell.

“Belonging has to do with being seen,” she said. “We want to see our employees, which means having visibility into things that are important to them.” Kafi’s goal: gathering a hub for all information about employees’ interests and origins that her HR team could use to set up different gifts, events, and cultural programming to celebrate Teleport’s workforce. 

But tracking and remembering all the finer details about Teleport’s employees got harder as the company grew. At first, Kafi used a spreadsheet to put together a database listing every team member’ interests and hobbies. But maintaining it manually drained a lot of time. “It’s so easy for a spreadsheet to get out of date,” she said.

The spreadsheet made it tough to distinguish between current and former employees. And listing every hobby as a “tag” made the database look scrambled. Also, since the information was “all over the place,” Kafi and her team couldn’t always track the more granular details behind employees’ lives that paint a fuller picture of who they are.

“We wanted to track all the little pieces so we can say congratulations not just when the baby is born but congratulations when they turn two or start to walk,” Kafi said. The spreadsheets weren’t great at capturing those kinds of specifics or giving the HR team a broader, overarching look at colleagues’ common interests. “It wasn’t quite what we were hoping to do,” said Kafi, who turned to her HCM for a hand.

Spreadsheets weren’t cutting it, but Teleport already used and loved Rippling HCM, which stored all the company’s employee data. When the platform unveiled a new Custom Apps feature, Kafi thought she had the perfect use case. “When Rippling offered to help, we jumped at the opportunity,” she said.

Together, Rippling and Teleport built an “Employee CRM” uniquely tailored to Teleport’s workforce, which offered everything Kafi envisioned—and more.

Teleport’s custom-built Employee CRM lists life events, hobbies and interests, and origins for every employee. Through surveys and natural conversations, the Custom App gathers a master list of employees’ passions. It’s also divided into broad categories (“Music”) and more niche subcategories (“Opera”) that lets Teleport’s HR team gauge what employees have in common. And employees can fill in however many categories they want to give a comprehensive look at all the interests and origins that shaped them.  

Unlike the past system, this new Employee CRM lets the HR team add notes that help admins learn and remember specific employee details (e.g., not just that they have a dog but its breed, name, and age). This helps Teleport’s HR team genuinely get to know its people. “Every week we start our meetings with things we’ve learned about our employees,” Kafi said. “Those little things remind us of our commitment to connect with our employees on a more personal level.”

Gathering and learning all this information is one thing. But the real beauty of this Custom App is that Kafi and her team can use it to dream up highly personalized ways to recognize and support Teleporters. “We want to celebrate employees in ways that are unique and customized, instead of sending generic ‘thank yous,’” she said.

How exactly has the team put the Employee CRM to use? They learned one employee was into lawn care, and wasn't able to take care of his grass at home after months of uncooperative weather. In the meantime, the HR team surprised him with a desk lawn to take care of inside the office. When they found out a separate long-tenured employee loves a specific bakery, they got him a gift card. For the 14 employees who mentioned they enjoy making their own baked goods, the HR team put together an online baking class. They’ve also used the system to organize Duolingo games for language enthusiasts, celebrate the births of new babies, and console employees during the tougher times, like when one’s beloved 15-year-old cat passed away. 

Kafi’s team can use the Custom App for programming inspo by taking a quick look at the surface-level data, or by running reports that let her discover trends and common hobbies, which she can tee up within minutes. 

Rippling’s support team helped Kafi bring the best version of what she wanted in a Custom App to life. “The folks at Rippling really walked us through setting it up,” she said. “Working with them to think about the functionality and which rules make the most sense helped us fit the vision and technical pieces together to get what we want.” 

And contrary to the old spreadsheet, which was a hassle to update manually, the Custom App version is synced to Teleport’s HCM. Since Rippling houses all the data, the system keeps automatic track of which employees join and which employees leave. The centralized platform helps any HR team member track and access the information, which helps them figure out the best ways to support every employee. 

“We’re hearing both new Teleporters and folks who have been here for a while are having a good work experience,” Kafi said. “Rippling is a part of that.”

• Enhanced employee experience: Employees appreciate that Teleport’s HR team celebrates their shared and individual interests—no matter what they are. Since the Custom App, the company’s seen higher onboarding and employee satisfaction scores. 
• Time saved: Rippling automates employee life cycle changes and rids the need of any manual work updating spreadsheets when employees join or leave. 
• People-focused HR: Now that HR team members can easily share knowledge of employees’ interests, they can design more thoughtful programming. 

We’re hearing both new Teleporters and folks who have been here for a while are having a good work experience… Rippling is a part of that.

Kafi Payne

Human Resources Director at Teleport