Case Study: How UpKeep brings their culture of gratitude into a remote world with Assembly

Assembly’s engagement platform made appreciation and recognition second nature to UpKeep’s dispersed team.

Katya Hill

Director of Marketing

March 29, 2022

Press the button to generate random icebreaker questions.

There are 300 more icebreaker questions at the bottom of the article

How would you describe your job to a five year old?

What season would you be?

What is a weird food you have tried? Would you eat it again?

What is your favorite holiday tradition?

Would you go in the mother-ship with aliens if they landed on Earth tomorrow?

What is your favorite season?

Do prefer working from home or the office?

What is your earliest memory of this job?

What is the best thing you have bought so far this year?

What is the earliest book you remember?

If you had to move to another country, which one would you choose?

You are the best criminal mastermind in the world. What crime would you commit if you knew you would get away with it?

What is your favorite movie genre to watch?

What was the last thing you ate?

What person from history would you add to Mount Rushmore?

What is a weird fact you know?

What is your favorite part of working from home?

Were the Spice Girls a good team?

Imagine you can instantly learn any language. Which would you choose?

If you could live in any state, which state would you pick?

Which fictional team is the best team of all time?

What did you want to be when you grew up?

What do you usually eat for a quick lunch?

What simple food will you never eat?

Show us the weirdest thing you have in the room with you right now.

Would you rather stay at a hotel or an AirBNB?

What is your favorite movie genre to watch?

Are you more productive in the morning or at night?

Who is someone in your community that makes a difference?

Who was your most unique pet?

Choose one famous person from history you want on your team during a zombie apocalypse.

What is a good way to give back to the community?

Which song could you listen to over and over again?

Is Hugh Grant funny?

What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast?

Would you want to have an imaginary friend today? Did you have one as a child?

What actor or actress would you want to play you in the movie about your life?

What is the best super power?

What is your New Years resolution?

You can only eat one food again for the rest of your life. What is it?

What is the best work holiday?

What is the first gift you remember receiving?

Would you rather join Metallica or Backstreet Boys?

What is the best example of a community you have seen?

What is an easy way to do something nice for someone?

Show us your phone background and tell the story behind why you picked this image.

What was your first job?

Pick any band to play at your funeral.

If you could have an unlimited supply of one thing for the rest of your life, what would you pick?

Which superpower would you give to your arch enemy?

What is the most obscure superpower you would want?

What emoji best describes how you are feeling right now?

If you could live in any country, which country would you pick?

Would you rather live in a city or a town?

What is your favorite holiday?

What is something you accomplished as part of a team?

What is your standard office lunch?

What is your most used phone app?

What is your favorite season?

Have you ever won something as a team?

Imagine you are a professional baseball player. What is your introduction song?

Beach holiday or ski trip?

Have you ever been to a funny comedy show?

Would you rather live at the North Pole or the South Pole?

What is your favorite song to sing?

If you could live in any state, which state would you pick?

Imagine you could teleport anywhere. Where would you go right now?

What is the most unusual job you have heard of?

What was the last thing you ate?

You can visit any fictional time or place. Which would you pick?

What do your family and friends think you do all day?

What movie do you wish you could watch again for the first time?

Show us your most-used emoji.

What was the most unique style or fashion trend you ever embraced?

What movie defined your generation?

You are stranded on a remote desert island. Are you alone or with your worst enemy?

What is your favorite knock-knock joke?

Have you ever told someone Santa is not real?

Do you know how to speak more than one language?

On a scale of 1 – 10, how much of a team player are you?

What is your #1 recommendation in this city?

What is your favorite holiday?

What bucket list item do you most want to check off in the next six months?

What is your favorite mythical creature?

What was the first way you made money?

If you could be great at any Olympic sport, which would it be?

Which song could you listen to over and over again?

When did you start liking/hating mushrooms?

Where is your favorite vacation spot?

Do you take your PTO all at one time, or another way?

Which show do you remember most from your childhood?

Which beverage goes best with pizza?

Would you want to have a personal assistant follow you around everywhere and do what you asked of them?

Have you ever met your idol?

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Would you rather live 100 years in the past or 100 years in the future?

What is your hobby?

When you are alone in the car, what volume is the music at?

Imagine you no longer have to work. How would you spend a Tuesday?

What is your favorite type of sandwich?

Generate A New Quesiton

Assembly aims to empower companies to work better, communicate more and recognize each other often. After implementing Assembly, UpKeep has seen incredible growth in internal appreciation, closer alignment with the core values, and has had a lot of fun along the way. Check out the secrets behind their success, shared by Heather Grant, Program Manager from the Office of the CEO:

About the Company

UpKeep is an Asset Operations Management platform purpose-built to bring together maintenance, operations, and reliability data to help teams make important business decisions, with full visibility across the entire life cycle of maintenance, asset management, and operations.

The Challenge

“Like a lot of companies in 2020, we began adjusting to this new way of working and what that meant for engaging with each other. Everyone was taken out of the comfort of in-person interactions. We’ve also been adding teammates from all over the country, which brought its own new set of challenges.

Recognition and gratitude have always been a big part of our culture, but now we had to find a way to bring that forward in the remote world. So we wanted to find a tool that would reinforce and strengthen that practice”.

Why Assembly

“Assembly was the perfect storm for us with being the tool that we needed at the right time. Customization was very important. We wanted a tool that could adjust to fit our needs rather than changing our processes and behaviors to accommodate the system. Our internal north stars for building software are ‘ease of use’ and ‘simplicity,’ so we needed a tool that reflected that. Assembly is extremely easy to use and straightforward. It’s robust without being complicated”.

Getting Started

“The support that we received throughout the sales and onboarding process made me very comfortable and excited to use the platform. The level of attentiveness was unbelievable, even with all the little questions I had.

We got a lot of guidance on how to roll this out to the team (we have 150 people, so it’s not an easy task), but Assembly gave us materials and training to utilize for the rollout. This certainly helped with making adoption a breeze.”

"It was important for us to train managers first and get them comfortable with the platform to maximize the adoption, and I was thrilled with how engaged and onboard everyone was with using Assembly from the get-go. It is robust in how we can use it and what we can do without being complicated or cumbersome. Now rewarding certain behaviors and activities is second nature."

Maximizing Assembly

"We utilize the Slack integration to the fullest. We have a dedicated Slack channel for recognition, and that channel is always, always going."

"We use the Core Values feature a lot. At the end of every month, we award a monthly leader for each core value. By having the ability to attach our core values to shoutouts and recognition, we can easily match it up at the end of the month and reward leaders for each of them."

"People love the prizes, the culture rewards that we have, and the ability to donate to our community. With remote work, we've implemented lots of prizes for different activities, and with Assembly, it doesn't have to be random or something they don't want. People can choose something truly special to them without it being manual."

"We love our culture rewards, and one of our favorite ones is 'Virtual Lunch with CEO.' To provide that opportunity in a structured way while making the CEO accessible to the entire company is awesome. It's part of our CEO's leadership style to connect and build the culture of gratitude with employees, but making it easy and simple for people in the remote world has been great. It allowed him to maintain the same practices of team connection, gratitude, and appreciation for one another with a tool that supports and reinforces that."

Impact on the Business

"One of the things that surprised me was the level of team adoption. We average over 300 shoutouts a month across 150 people, and we have had highs of over 500, 600, and even 700 shoutouts a month. Gratitude is such a big part of our culture and Assembly's ability to support that has been phenomenal".

"Assembly has been the main vehicle for us to see publicly how the team supports each other, collaborates, and stays accountable to one another".

"I've been blown away with the quality and the level of specificity that people put into their shoutouts. It's special to see people appreciate each other and build connections in such a meaningful way.”