Crunchbase balances employee happiness and business success

Crunchbase strikes a balance between employee happiness and business success

January 7, 2025 3:26 PM

Group of employees sitting and standing around a table

As the new year gets underway, people leaders are focused on how to make it the best year yet for their workforce and their business.

For Crunchbase CPO Kelly Mendez-Scheib, this means doing everything possible to "support people in a safe, authentic way," in both their personal and professional lives.

"HR is an interesting tight rope to walk, because you live in a world where you want to serve the employees, but you always have to have your eye on the business," she says. "[We want to] ensure our employees are absolutely feeling taken care of, because a happy employee is a productive employee."

From a continued focus on mental health and wellness and professional development, to thoughtful incorporation of benefits and company policies, Mendez-Scheib has high hopes for this year and beyond.

"Our employees are heads-down, but we never want to make them feel like they're not being heard, like we're not taking their life into consideration," she says.

Mendez-Scheib shares three ways Crunchbase is creating an ideal work environment for its employees.

Incorporation of well-being experts

Last year, Crunchbase piloted a coach-in-residence program as an addition to their employee well-being strategy. A third party coach was assigned to different employees over the span of the fourth quarter, working with them on leadership development, how their personal values connect to the workplace, stress management, resilience, and more.

The company also brought in a psychotherapist for off-site training sessions, and are planning to make this a bigger part of the employee experience this year, Mendez-Scheib says. Despite being a career coach herself, she notes the importance of being open to outside expertise.

"I thought we were better served by having a third party come in, [and] it went over great," she says. "I want to ensure anything that supports our employees' well-being is hyper authentic. When you're singularly focused just supporting employees, that allows an employee to feel that degree of authenticity. It's not that the HR profession isn't capable of doing it; I just think that there is an inherent conflict."

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A forward-thinking approach to career development

Professional growth is another top priority at Crunchbase, and Mendez-Scheib predicts that, especially among younger employees, a broader career path will be desirable. Along with her role as CPO, Mendez-Scheib also works as an adjunct professor, which she says helps her lead and teach from a more aware, empathetic level. She supports this exploration of various professional opportunities for Crunchbase employees, too, and notes that with the right planning, other employers can successfully do the same for their workers.

"The generation that's entering the workforce now has very different expectations than many of the generations before," she says. "We have to meet them where they are, and we are going to be looking at very different structures of work. For instance, with gig workers becoming more and more significant in the workforce, there is going to be a further push toward, 'I'm not interested in sitting nine to five. I'm not interested in long commutes. I'm not interested in any of that. How do I live more of a portfolio career versus just [being in] one career space?'"

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Benefits that are also good for branding

As employers try to strike a balance between things like RTO expectations and employee satisfaction, Mendez-Scheib emphasizes having an intentional outlook when bringing in benefits and policies. The key is to put things in place that will make employees feel appreciated, while ensuring well-liked benefits and policies don't get rolled back, protecting the company brand in the process, she says.

"Now more than ever, there is rampant branding, [like] Glassdoor ratings to what people are seeing on Tiktok and other social media platforms," Mendez-Scheib says. "The branding that is happening amongst your youngest employees is very significant. You don't ever want to be fighting the game of bad external reputation."