Knix is an intimate apparel brand on a mission to inspire people of every age to live unapologetically free. A woman-founded, Canadian direct-to-consumer brand, Knix has its corporate office in Toronto, 12 retail stores across Canada, and two stores in California. In 2022, when Knix had a headcount of 280, Christine Song joined as CPO. In her first 30 days at the company, she reviewed their tech stack and found that many of their tools were insufficient for a scaling company such as Knix. In particular, their HRIS was not intuitive and the reporting feature was a challenge to use. Christine wanted to replace it with a user-friendly and data-driven platform that would serve as a centralized place for their people to view company updates and engage. After reviewing several HCMs, Bob ticked all the boxes, and its diversity and inclusion features—including the option for employees to add their preferred pronouns—made it a clear winner.
Supporting the company mission with a data-driven approach
“At Knix, we believe that everyone should be able to live unapologetically free. Free from judgment. Free from self-doubt. Free to be yourself.”
This mission, proudly emblazoned on Knix’s website, is a testament to the company’s stance on how they market their products and run their business. Knix is passionate about diversity and inclusion and ensuring a sense of belonging for their people.
Diversity isn’t only a concern for Knix’s people team. Their board is also invested. They want to see the numbers—not only on Knix’s headcount and turnover but also regarding the company culture and DE&I. Knix’s people team needed a solution to provide them with data for the board and enable them to view and track their efforts to build a diverse and inclusive culture.
Bob’s DE&I dashboard provides Knix with real-time diversity data on their workforce, including within teams, which Knix understands is critical for diverse thought and business success. Collecting the data is easy using Bob. As Christine explains, “When we looked at the capabilities in Bob, the reporting, the graphs, they were so beautiful. We didn’t have to do a single thing. We take a lot of data from there and incorporate that into our board decks.”
Knix’s people team also uses data from Bob’s dashboards to nurture their leaders. They compile and share leadership scorecards that score them on their leadership skills, team turnover, growth, OKRs, diversity, and more. These insights help the people team to identify problem areas across the organization and provide the leaders with areas for improvement.
Providing the best employee experience from corporate to the shop floor
Knix has 194 employees working from their corporate headquarters and 164 employees working across their 14 retail stores. Before the company implemented Bob, the retail staff didn’t have a way to receive company updates or feel part of Knix’s unique culture, as the company’s Slack channel and town hall meetings are restricted to corporate employees. Knix wanted to create a sense of belonging for all their employees, wherever they worked.
Bob’s newsfeed provides company announcements and updates, allowing all Knix employees to feel connected to the company culture. Every Knix store has laptops and iPads available for the staff to use, and Bob’s mobile app also helps everyone stay easily connected wherever they are.
One of Bob’s features available to everyone at Knix is posting a Kudos for recognizing business success and a job well done. While everyone at Knix uses this feature, it has proven particularly popular among employees in the retail space. They share success stories from the shop floor that enable people across the organization to get to know and celebrate Knix’s frontline employees, creating a feeling of community among all the staff.
Using Bob has also helped Knix’s people get to know each other on a deeper level, contributing to Knix’s warm company culture. People regularly look at their peers’ profiles to learn more about them, which has helped them forge closer friendships. “You wouldn’t be able to develop those friendships if you didn’t have a tool to help you understand where each team member is coming from.” Christine adds, “And this is particularly helpful when we have new hires. When someone comes in, they might be a little shy, but they start filling their profile, and you can learn about them a bit more.”
Main takeaways
- Knix’s people team can seamlessly view and track their diversity goals using Bob’s DE&I dashboard.
- All Knix employees, from corporate to retail, feel a sense of belonging and part of the company culture with Bob’s newsfeed.
- Peer recognition, which has improved employee satisfaction, has become part of the culture at Knix, thanks to Bob’s Kudos.
