Connecting colleagues from all over the world

“I had my first Mystery Coffee yesterday, and it was fantastic.
It’s amazing how we have both been with Paychex for over a decade and would never have crossed paths if not for this program. We talked about work, kids, our past, our future… it was a fantastic half-hour conversation (15 minutes definitely isn’t enough) and I am looking forward to my next meeting!”

Sabrina Stout
Mystery Coffee participant

Challenge

A company culture of growth and success while living the values, where every single employee feels included, is extremely important for us at Paychex. We believe that our unique culture is truly our competitive advantage, so we continuously work on initiatives to strengthen and reinforce our culture.

With more employees working remotely or on a hybrid schedule than ever before, maintaining our culture in a post-pandemic world is crucial. During COVID, we heard about colleagues who felt lonely while working from home or simply missed the informal chats with their co-workers. In fact, we’ve had many new hires over the past two years of COVID-19 who have never stepped foot in a Paychex office! We know we had to react to this feedback to keep our company culture strong and ensure everyone’s well-being.

Solution

At Paychex, we organize culture-shaping workshops and training programs for our employees worldwide.
In addition, we currently have more than 1,200 “culture champions” who keep our values-based culture top-of-mind for their colleagues by being proactive, motivated, and engaged catalysts for change. These culture champions endorse Mystery Coffee as the perfect addition to our culture program and an easy solution for our COVID-related challenges.

Mystery Coffee allows us to tackle these challenges by opening up new ways to connect that we didn’t have before. Initially, we matched our US-based colleagues for virtual coffee breaks. Today, we encourage our employees to network beyond the physical boundaries of their departments and locations – with a global Mystery Coffee system.

Colleagues who would never have met in real life are now getting to know each other. That’s awesome!

To make the coffee chats even more interesting and exciting, participants get an email with the interests and hobbies of their match before the virtual coffee meeting. Another great add-on is the ice-breaker questions for every coffee match.

It’s never been so easy and exciting to start a conversation with someone they’ve never met!

Impact

The positive feedback from our employees is fantastic! We indeed feel how they enjoy their coffee talks with their (until now) unknown colleagues. Mystery Coffee allows Paychex employees to meet people from other parts of the company, find reassurance through people going through the same things, realize they have something in common, and in the end, fight isolation while working from home. This strengthens our company culture and sense of belonging tremendously.

Some of our employees also post about their Mystery Coffee experience on Social Media and tag their coffee partners. This shows how this program positively affects our company culture and our value of treating each other with respect and dignity. Our employees build great internal partnerships and support each other, ultimately leading to better service for our clients. Such a great side effect!

Today we are proud that we’ve connected more than 1300 employees from more than 129 locations – all within a very short period of time.

About Paychex
Paychex, Inc. is a leading provider of integrated human capital management solutions for payroll, benefits, human resources, and insurance services. The HR solutions provider has locations worldwide with over 50 years of industry expertise. Get to know more about Paychex and its solutions.