Hybrid

We asked our employees to weigh in on this and the three words that won were collaborative, innovative, and supportive. Here’s why, as shared directly by Cocoon team members: Collaborative: At a smaller company, some things can be all hands on deck. People approach these situations with a “no task too small” mindset because we know we’re all working towards the same thing. There’s so much empathy across teams, which we intentionally foster. For example, the Engineering, Product, and Design organization has a “Cocoon POV” program where people shadow other roles to get a better understanding of their daily routines, processes, challenges, and more. When we win, it’s a company win. Every month, we have a team do a deep dive into “a day in the life” of that team. Innovation: We’re truly building something novel in the leave space. This mindset extends into our company culture as well. We’re always questioning our processes to make sure they are as efficient as possible. We’re not going to do something just because “it’s the way it’s always been done.”  Supportive: The people at Cocoon are truly something special—we’re spread across the U.S. and we’re still so connected. People have a lot of empathy, understanding, and grace. At the same time, the level of competence is so high and people are extremely gifted at this company–but there’s space to fail and learn and iterate quickly. Despite the pace at which we move, there’s always time to stop and ask someone for assistance to make sure we’re getting it right.

The Cocoon leadership team plays a huge role in promoting and embodying the collaborative, innovative, and supportive culture that drives our team. Our two founders (Mahima Chawla and Lauren Dai) both became parents within the first year and half of starting Cocoon. Mahima often talks about how it felt like she had to make a choice between starting a company or starting a family and she didn’t think those options had to be mutually exclusive. She’s honest with the team—since the pandemic, personal and professional lives aren’t really separate and that’s ok. She often has public blocks on her calendar to pick up her child from daycare in the afternoons, or for a doctor's appointment, or anything else that comes with the day-to-day of raising a family. Being open about the challenges that come with juggling a child and running a company allows other employees to share the caregiving responsibilities they have to take on as well. This supportive environment creates space for employees to thrive because they aren’t worried about trying to “hide” how much is going on outside of work. Talking about values and actually living them out are often two different things. Luckily, when it comes to Cocoon, they’re not. When the occasion arises for action, Cocoon’s leadership team has stepped up to set the standard. For example, after the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, the team rolled out a compassionate leave policy. This policy is 4 weeks of fully paid leave for anything that’s not covered under the FMLA. Most importantly, it’s no questions asked—as long as the reason for leave doesn’t fall under one of our other paid policies, the employee gets it off. We outline some common uses for this policy to guide employees, including bereavement, abortion care, legal proceedings (e.g. custody hearings), acute mental health crises, and pregnancy loss. Cocoon's leadership doesn’t just talk about creating a new era for leave–they pioneer it firsthand. Our leadership team has lived through some of the experiences that Cocoon exists to transform, and they use that lens to thoughtfully craft an experience that helps our people show up as their fullest selves.

We have a truly exceptional team at Cocoon, and we try to recognize and reward them as much as possible. This starts small, with our #kudos Slack channel that is used to send quick messages to the entire team about something someone just accomplished—whether that be sending their first outbound campaign, speaking at an event, or finishing a huge milestone in a project. This is one of our most active company channels because when a new message comes through, tons of other team members jump in and add their own words of encouragement or congratulations. We take this a step further at our weekly company meeting, where Mahima picks out a kudos message from the previous week that best embodies one or more of our company values and gives a Values Award. Our company values are “row together,” “move with speed and conviction,” and “get in the arena” and we publicly recognize the winner during the meeting. Beyond cultural recognition, we also believe in rewarding performance through compensation. For a small company, we have an advanced leveling system–this allows employees to make incremental career and financial progress through different steps within each level, without having to entirely jump levels each time. This flexibility ensures we can consistently and equitably appreciate team members' growth.