Smart50 Workplaces 2023: GoKindly

Founder: Laura Conti
Headquarters: Coburg, Victoria
Year founded: 2018
Employees: 5-20
Industry: Retail
Website: gokindly.com.au

GoKindly, a certified B Corporation, is a mattress and bedding company that supplies 50% of its profits to women experiencing homelessness. As an employer, it also prides itself on hiring women from backgrounds of entrenched disadvantage and marginalisation, and providing a safe and secure work environment for them.

“Warehouse pick and pack work for ecommerce and retail can be dirty, high pressure and not glamourous,” says GoKindly’s Smart50 Workplaces application. Shifts can be long and the workforces largely casual, and economic pressure on workers commonplace. GoKindly aims to reduce that stress on employees by offering secure employment, flexible shift times, and a pleasant, well ventilated, heated and cooled studio work space – not a warehouse.

Split shifts and flexible start and finishing times allow parents and carers to make necessary pick ups and drop offs, travel outside peak hours and take other personal time required. An added bonus is the crossover time between shifts, “which is actually nice for handover and social interaction.”

Casualisation of the pick and pack, warehouse and logistics industries, has “devalued the skills in the space” says GoKindly’s submission, “and doesn’t value the customer experience impact that pick and pack teams have in product experience.

“What lots of ecommerce brands don’t realise is that pick and pack staff pick up product defects, product issue and product opportunities – and if they’re not valued and included in the wider brand, you miss strategic and customer delight opportunities. By integrating pick and pack into our day to day studio operations, ensuring they’re valued permanent employees, we have a strategic and customer advantage.”

GoKindly’s hands-on approach to supporting staff to feel valued in the workplace, fair pay and safe working conditions have resulted in very low turnover.

Culture and values at GoKindly

Everyday goods with extraordinary impact, delivered in a kindness circle. At every touchpoint in our supply chain we will act with kindness and integrity.

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