In March 2021, Instinct was recognized as a Great Place to Work® Certified company. This award is based entirely on what current employees say about their experience working at Instinct, so you can probably imagine how excited we all were by this amazing achievement.

Over the past year, we've gotten questions from customers, partners, and other veterinary professionals about what this actually means (and how we became certified), so we’re doing a quick post about it.

Let’s pull back the curtain so you can take a look at the certification process with Great Place to Work®.

What Is Great Place to Work®?

Great Place to Work® (GPTW) describes itself as the global authority on workplace culture.

Their mission is to help organizations quantify their culture, produce better business results, and build a better world by helping every organization become a great place to work for all.

Since 1992, they’ve surveyed more than 100 million employees around the world and have used those insights to define what really makes a great workplace: trust.

The Why

According to Great Place to Work®, being certified is “a badge of honor that validates the employee experience you’ve created for your people and the great workplace culture you’ve built.”

Plus, certification helps companies recruit new employees, retain existing ones, open partnership opportunities, and a lot more.

We’ve seen the GPTW certification badge on sites for all kinds of companies, like Google, Salesforce, and Marriott (and that’s just to name a few). So why not Instinct? 😊

Certified companies are also automatically considered for placement on 20+ Best Workplaces™ lists, such as Fortune Best Workplaces for Diversity, Millennials, Parents, and more. Each certification lasts for 1 year which means once we get certified initially, there are even more opportunities to become recognized for other accomplishments throughout the year.

The How

The certification is based on an anonymous team survey where each team member provides honest and candid feedback regarding their experience at your company.

Pro-Tip: Having an amazing team helps! 🙌🏼

To kick off the process, you can visit the Great Place to Work® website and submit a short form with your contact information. One of their representatives gets in touch to learn more about your company, share more about their mission, and get you going on some paperwork.

Before the survey is sent to your team, you’ll complete a thorough company history questionnaire and provide background information on your team. Once that’s done, the GPTW team takes care of the rest by sending out the main survey on your requested date.

For our team, the survey took about 15 minutes to complete and was available for 2 weeks so everyone could complete it at their convenience. The team was asked about Instinct’s workplace culture, leadership, communication, promotions, benefits, team camaraderie, and more, and answered questions on a scale from “Almost always untrue” to “Almost always true.” The results were then tallied and we were notified of the good news.

The Outcome

An outstanding 100% of employees said Instinct is a great place to work, and that when you join Instinct, you are made to feel welcome.

As you might imagine, we could not have been more excited to hear this news. It’s an amazing achievement and a testament to the efforts of every member of our team toward building a positive, welcoming culture at Instinct.

Through the survey, our team was also able to give us some important feedback on where we can make things even better—because there’s always room for improvement.

And remember how we mentioned certified companies are also automatically considered for placement on 20+ Best Workplaces™ lists? Well, this past August, Instinct was placed on the FORTUNE Best Small & Medium Workplaces List for 2021!

This was another meaningful achievement and a huge milestone for us, and it wouldn’t be possible without the hard work and dedication of our amazing team.

Check out the rest of the companies who made this list here.

What’s Next?

Instinct hit some incredible milestones in 2021.

Becoming Great Place to Work® certified and making the FORTUNE Best Small & Medium Workplaces™ makes us all so proud of the work we’re doing and the impact we’re having on the veterinary community.

This accomplishment has also opened the door for many new opportunities that wouldn’t have been possible without this recognition, including media inquiries and podcast invitations. It’s also helped us attract top-tier talent to join our team.

We’ve been so happy with these results that we plan on continuing our partnership with Great Place to Work® in 2022 and the years to come to keep our certification status active. Stay tuned—we’re just getting started!