We are into Culture

Co-Founders John and Jody - Two cultured guys

Co-Founders John and Jody – The culture warriors

Worldline is an ambitious company.

Our goal is not to be a leader in Canadian telecom, we want to be the leader. We are working hard to make Worldline the “go to” provider for Canadians who are looking for quality service at a sensible price, and we are well on our way.

To get all the way there, we also have to be the “go to” company for talent. The best people make the best companies, and as we grow, everyone we add has to be as good as the spectacular crew we already have on board.

But there’s another piece to the puzzle. To attract the best talent, not only do we have to be rocking as a company, which we are, we also have to have a terrific corporate culture.

Which we do.

Have you ever worked at a place where everyone is looking out for themselves? Where there is no teamwork? Where it’s only about the paycheck and “what’s mine?” Ya, we all have, and those places suck. It feels like drudgery dragging yourself to the office. Then there are the places ruled by politics, which I would suggest are even worse.

Not at Worldline.

For instance, look at these programs that all Worldline employees have access to. You could call them perks I guess, but mostly they are simply common sense benefits that don’t cost an arm or a leg, and makes Worldline a better place to work. (You should try some of them at your office too)

Amanda and Abby

Amanda and Abby

Dog friendly environment – The greatest stress burners there are run around on four legs. Particularly the head of HR  Amanda Little‘s dog Abby, who also works as a service dog for St. John’s Ambulance at local retirement homes.

Yoga classes – Every Thursday at noon, the meeting room just off the main lobby is transformed into a sunny Yoga studio, with one of our wellness instructors, Gloria, leading the way.

Wait. Wellness Instructors? You don’t have wellness instructors? We have two, the aforementioned Gloria and her partner Val come in every week and do physical evaluations for any employee who wants one, and works with them to create plans for both fitness and diet.

Fitness bootcamp – Co-workers form four man/woman teams and compete against each other for bi-weekly fitness bootcamps with points awarded for such activities as aerobics, weight training, cubicle fitness exercises (try lifting your butt 3″ off your chair and holding that position for 30 seconds. I dare you!) and of course, yoga, (a big point-getter by the way). It gets pretty hard-core but it’s all under the supervision of our certified trainers.

GymIn House Gym – Okay, not every company can have one of these, but our in-house certified trainers hold scheduled workout sessions with whoever wants one. The gym is available for use 24/7, and employees can fit their workout into their daily schedule when possible.

And coming soon: The Quiet room – Sleeping during the workday? You bet. We’re introducing a quiet room in the near future. A small office is being outfitted with a sofa, a blinky and an alarm clock for powernaps to re-energize and re-invigorate workers who might be suffering from the mid-afternoon nods.

All of these are nice, but they are not what makes Worldline one of the best places to work in Canada.

But they sure do help.

Worldline’s Unlimited High Speed Internet hits the road

Worldine's coming out party!

We’re everywhere!

In and around Ontario, the Worldline brand is starting to make a name for itself, like in this ad for our Unlimited High Speed Internet for only $29.95.

The folks in the back of the bus image are all your friendly neighborhood Worldline employees, like our VP of Product Development, Mike Brown, the head of HR, Amanda Little, and Social Media and Event Marketer Erin Wagner, (ya, that Erin Wagner of Twitter fame). The little kid? Sorry, he’s a Super Hero and therefore his identity has to be kept secret. (duh!)

This campaign is all about how a (relatively) small company like Worldline can make a BIG difference in the telecommunications marketplace. How we are trying to save as many of our fellow Canadians hundreds of dollars a year on their home phone and Internet bills that they are needlessly handing over to the big boys just because…well, because they haven’t heard about us yet.

Worldline – There’s a new hero in town.

BTW: In a couple of weeks we’ll be running a contest surrounding this new campaign launch and for the winner, they’re going to take home some serious swag! In the mean time, if you haven’t already, visit our Facebook page and enter the Great 50/50 Facebook Contest to win a 50″ HDTV before it’s too late!

Why is Worldline “Canada’s best kept telecom secret” anyway?

We say it all the time: “Worldline – Canada’s best kept telecom secret.”

So, ummm, why is that?

Why is that we have 300,000 folks across Canada using our services, yet when you ask pretty much anyone if they’ve ever heard of Worldline, the answer is, “ahhhh, nope!”?

Even the folks who work here have to spend an uncomfortable amount of time explaining to friends and family about where they work. Last month we had this in-house promotion for friends and family about the March Madness Pricing for the Unlimited High Speed Internet and Home Phone Bundle and I had to assure my brother-in-law that Worldline was “legit,” because he’d “never heard of them before.”

It’s a bit of a pain, and it is one guy’s fault really. This guy, John Stix, Worldline’s Chief Marketing Officer.John Stix

When John and Jody Schnarr founded Worldline ten years ago they launched their company in a very atypical fashion: essentially they gave away all the credit.

Their first ever telecom product was a service to provide free long distance between Kitchener and Stratford, Ontario. They couldn’t find enough people to sign up for the service to pay for it, so instead they latched onto a radio business model. Anyone who wanted to make a call would have to listen to a 30-second ad before their call went through.

A local car dealership owner, Gary Stockie, took the chance, and handed over the equivalent of the a month’s expenses, and the use of a car, and presto, the Worldline business model was born.

A local newspaper article talking about that their new company offering free calls between the two cities resulted in 4,000 customers basically overnight.

Stockie’s business went through the roof, and John and Jody parlayed that success story into free long distance call service for a whole host of companies like the Sun Media Group and Labbatt.

Tens of thousands of customers were using Worldline long distance and phone services, but they didn’t know it. They thought they were using the “Bud Phone” or “Sun Call” of the “London Free Press Call”. Worldline had more than 300 partners across the country taking all the credit for the services Worldline was providing.

Which was fine. The partners were offering all these great phone and Internet services, and Worldline could concentrate on building the best cross-country network possible and on excellent customer service, all without having to spend a dime on marketing.

Well, it worked well – up to a point, because now Worldline wants to grow faster.

Now we want to get the word out about us, not someone else. Now we want to let as many Canadians know about our great products and services because it’s great for them, and great for us.

Now we’re spending marketing dollars. Now we’re running advertising campaigns in specific markets in Canada. Now were promoting the company online and on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

We’re introducing an entire new branding strategy that shows us for what we are; the young kid on the block looking to take on Big Telecom. Here’s a sneak peek:

Screen Shot 2013-04-15 at 4.54.04 PM

So look out everybody, here we come.

Canada’s best kept telecom secret no longer.

“No company does this. Nobody.”

Sam Sam Pajpani is the director of marketing for us here at Worldline and the company is very lucky to have him.

In telecommunications for years, Sam has worked at all the big players like Rogers, Sprint, and the granddaddy of us all, Bell, before coming on board here.

Over that time he has run probably a couple hundred new product launches in his career, so you’d think he would have seen it all by now.

Nope. At the beginning of this month Worldline did something that he’d never experienced before.

See, we dropped the price of our Digital Home Phone package from the already low $12.95/month  to just $9.95/month – the lowest price in the entire country.

Everyone in marketing was pretty thrilled about the price point to say the least. $9.95? What an easy number to bring to market! Then someone brought up the point, “What about our existing customers?”

Simple, The customer service team called up each and every one of them to let them know that we were dropping their rates.

His reaction?  “No company does this. Nobody.”

Those companies he used to work for? He told us not in a million years would they do something like that. Once someone has signed up with one of those guys, they sign a contract locking them in for the entire term. There are no price cuts. There are no deals.

The only time a customer might be able to get a deal is when they are nearing the end of their contract and they threaten to drop their provider.

We hear this all the time from new customers. When they dropped their service and came over to us, the first thing their old service provider does is to get in touch and, out of nowhere, offer them the same rate that we charge.

Not before. Only upon threat of leaving does a customer deserve a break.

Not so at Worldline.

Sam and the rest of us are committed to providing the best service and value possible for our customers.

We’ll even call you up to let you know all about it.

Get your #moneysavingtips

twitterWe here a Worldline know that if you are not with us, you are paying way too much for your Home Phone and Internet. That’s why we offer Canadians the best deal in the industry on these two crucial services.

It’s kind of what we’re all about.

Saving you money. But why stop there? There are other ways we can help save you money as well.

For example:

or

Those are just a couple of the hundreds of #moneysavingtips we post on our @worldlinecanada Twitter feed. Two or three times every day we provide our followers with some common sense (and occasionally bizarre) tips that help them keep a few extra dollars in their pockets.

We can never get enough, and since we’ve started pumping them out, a bunch of other folks have come up with their #moneysavingtips and a nice little Twitter community has been formed.

So, follow us @worldlinecanada for updates on Worldline products, specials, contests, like the one we had going on at Facebook for a 50″ HDTV for instance. And also for simple ways to avoid wasting your hard-earned dollars.

@worldlinecanada‘s #moneysavingtips:  they just make – dare we say it? – cents.

Oh, and if you have any tips that you use and like, pass them along. We’d love to share what you’ve come up with.