Every now and then, a start-up goes into hypergrowth. Kilo Health is the perfect example of this by more than doubling both the revenue and size of the team in 2021, with similar goals for the coming year. Of course, hiring at such a rapid pace means a lot of thinking about how to scale the culture of the company.
This is why we were excited to interview Juste Vižinytė, Chief People Officer at Kilo Health. We asked her about the thinking behind “spoiling the employees” with perks and benefits, why they discarded all rules regarding the working location, and much more!
🔵 Before we get to the exciting growth story, could you please explain what Kilo Health does? What are your most popular products, who are your clients, and where are they located?
Kilo Health is one of the leading digital health and wellness companies in the world. We’re also among the fastest-growing health tech companies in Europe with 500+ employees. Our headquarters are in Lithuania, but we also have offices in Berlin and Kyiv.
We have plenty of well-performing products, from mental health apps to weight management programs. We’re also providing tools to prevent, manage, or treat various health conditions, focusing on developing chronic condition management products.
Some of the most popular products include:
Klinio – for diabetes management
Sensa – for mental health and wellness support
Cardi.Health – for cardiovascular health
Keto Cycle – for keto-powered nutrition
DoFasting – for following a healthy intermittent fasting routine
Our largest market is the US, but other English-speaking countries such as the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, also play a significant role. Other important markets for us include Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Middle Eastern, and Scandinavian countries. Anyone who wishes to have a better, healthier lifestyle might be our client.
🔵 Thinking about Kilo Health, the first thing that comes to mind is explosive growth. Could you give some insight into how quickly your business is accelerating?
Both the team and revenues are indeed growing at breakneck speed. We have hired 365 new people in 2021 so far. Next year, we plan to double our revenues, which already means generating a nine-digit revenue in 2022.
🔵 How is the size of the team holding up?
We’re facing hypergrowth. Every week, 4–10 new people join our team, so you can imagine the challenges we have. We put a lot of effort into the first onboarding day so that new hires may experience our culture and meet as many colleagues as possible. Still, the most important factor is how they feel during the first few months.
Additionally, we want to create a supportive, inviting, and challenging environment that keeps people working with us for a long time. That’s why we’re expanding not only the talent acquisition team but also hiring people responsible for motivation and personal development.
We don’t want to simply grow our teams, but to make sure that everyone who already works at Kilo Health is happy and sees meaning in their work and our mission. This is the only way to push Kilo Health to the next level.
🔵 Facing the hypergrowth of the team, have you opened any new offices lately, or have you opted more for a hybrid or remote work approach?
We have surveyed our people and learned that there is no one-size-fits-all option. As a result, everyone now works the way they want – anyone can find a place in the office, but if you prefer, you can work from anywhere in the world. We certainly do not apply strict rules.
One of our core values is ownership, freedom and creativity so each employee can make their own decisions on how and where to work – you do you, as long as the job gets done. Still, we try to make our offices as inviting as possible, so that more people want to come and work from there. We have offices in Vilnius and other Lithuanian cities, as well as spaces in Berlin and Kyiv.
🔵 With the team constantly expanding, high-performing employees should have good options for career growth. Could you share some stories of rising employees inside the company?
We try to help our employees grow by acquiring additional skills and promoting people from within the company. We create authentic leaders because Kilo Health’s culture is unique. Also, it is really valuable to train our existing employees for higher positions because they already know our culture.
An excellent example of this is one of our first teammates Kristina Zalnieraite who joined Kilo Health as a nutrition specialist back in 2018. Today, she is the Head of Nutrition and Wellness with 15 nutrition experts, dietitians and fitness consultants in her team.
Of course, we are always looking for external talents to join the ranks of our leadership team or as senior specialists. This ensures that we broaden our horizons as a company and soak in the best practices from different industries.
🔵 Even among startups, Kilo Health stands out for an extensive list of perks and benefits. Could you highlight some of them?
We just opened our new office, and we can call it Disneyland for our employees – we will have a massage parlour, gym, a bar, and just about anything you need to stay healthy, happy, and inspired. One of the recent must-haves is flexible private health insurance – as a company that works in the wellness industry, it was a no-brainer. We also provide 5 additional days off whenever you need it, workations, and all the learning opportunities you want, among other things.
We don’t think the fridge full of food, a taxi budget, or a game room is a perk. It’s just a part of creating an inviting environment and allowing some time to recharge and rest. We focus on making sure that employees’ ideas are heard, the work is challenging, the teams are inviting, and our people can ambitiously grow together with the company.
🔵 What’s the philosophy behind “spoiling your employees”?
If you love your teams, they will love their work. If you give your heart to your colleagues, they will share theirs.
🔵 If MeetFrank’s monthly leaderboards are any indication, Kilo Health is unquestionably one of the hottest Lithuanian startups to work for in 2021. How much interest in the company do you see among candidates?
We need to headhunt people like everyone else, but I think it is a bit easier for us at this point. We emphasize our culture and hire based on cultural fit and expertise.
We have already reached our yearly employee hiring goal for this year. We have a diverse group of colleagues – from Kyiv or Berlin to the Philippines or the UK. All of them provide Kilo Health with a diverse and global mindset.
🔵 Kilo Health has a particular company culture, amplified by prominent employer branding. In your opinion, what kind of qualities should the person have to fit into the team?
We look for people with a heightened sense of ownership but are also free, positive, straightforward, ambitious, flexible, fast, agile, and have a good sense of humour – those who wish to grow together and push the company to become better.
Check out Kilo.Health’s open positions on MeetFrank:
🔵 And finally, where do you see Kilo Health in the next few years?
Kilo Health was founded to design the most engaging and effective digital lifestyle interventions that lead to a healthier life by preventing, managing, or treating various health conditions. Our vision is to become the No. 1 digital health company in chronic condition management globally with the steady and constant growth we’ve maintained so far.
More and more companies are investing time and money into the wellbeing of their team. You can find wonderful and unique perks companies offer in to improve the health & wellness of their employees. I’m happy to say that this has become the standard. And rightly so. Every sick day is time lost in productivity.
So how do you prevent people from getting sick? You cannot totally prevent this, especially in the Nordic countries but you can take steps to promote a healthier lifestyle, keep stress levels low and show some appreciation to your most valuable asset, which is your team.
Here we have compiled a list of 19 companies in Finland that go the extra mile. Let’s look at what they do to keep their team at their best possible health.
Health Checks
Regular health checks are very important. Regrettably, people don’t visit the doctors regularly and underlying health issues that could be fixed easily, get discovered in the late stages. By adding health checks as part of company perks in combination with reminders to actually go and see the doctor can go a long way.
In addition to this, there’s evidence that being on point about your team’s wellbeing can boost work morale quite significantly. Keeping in mind of course that this is a delicate and private matter.
All of the following could be addressed during a health check that The World Health Organisation (WHO) identifies as key risk factors to health:
Smoking
Drinking alcohol
High blood pressure
High cholesterol
Obesity
High blood glucose
Poorly balanced diet
Lack of exercise
In addition to discovering some health issues that need interference, regular health checks can point out some lifestyle choices that could be changed and give you the push you need to transform to a healthier lifestyle, such as quitting smoking for example.
Here are some of the companies in Finland that offer health checks on MeetFrank:
It goes without saying that nutrition is one of the key factors to a healthy lifestyle. Furthermore, even people at a healthy weight, poor diet is associated with major health risks that can cause illness and even death. These include heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, and certain types of cancer. By making smart food choices, you can help protect yourself from these health problems.
Always sticking to a healthy diet is harder than you’d expect. Here a little nudge from your workplace and colleagues can go a long way. Healthy snacks rather than chocolate available for the whole team helps healthy eating become a habit.
These companies offer fresh fruit & veg in the office
Remote work is starting to become the norm in all different types of businesses. From startups to public sector to corporate to SME’s. There’s more than enough research to suggest that remote work can help keep stress levels down and boost productivity.
More and more companies in Finland are adding remote work to their perks. Depending on the company, some offer 100% remote positions, some choose to have a few days per week working from home.
Here are companies offering remote work in Finland on MeetFrank:
Healthy eating is the key to keeping on top of your health but that is far from all. To keep a healthy body and mind you also need to keep active. This can be difficult to keep track of when you’re at an office job and only stand up a few times per day. On the other hand, gym memberships can be costly.
This is where a fitness culture at work can go a long way to keep you at your fittest. Rather than beers at the pub, having team sports events on the agenda can also help teamwork and boost overall work morale.
Here are some companies getting their team to be more active by offering gym membership:
Knowit offers an online training program including: time management, mindfulness, weight control, teamwork, efficiency and much more.
Advance B2B does weekly stretching classes in the office.
F-Secure takes it a step further with their own in-house gym.
Qentinel a paid child care service in case your kids get ill. Most of the time the parents choose to stay at home with kids however if there’s an important presentation or some reason why parent cannot be present at home, Qentinel covers the cost.
Check out all the companies and what they have to offer in the MeetFrank app.
Want your company featured in this article and tell everyone about your perks? Set up a profile on MeetFrank and let us know!
The happiness and health of your team directly affects productivity. Luckily we are no longer in an era where workers are seen as slaves. Your team is your most important asset and many companies are doing all they can to make sure their talent is well looked after.
Stress is directly linked to your health and this is crucial especially in Estonian climate. As soon as the summer months are over, the sickness season begins. As the sick pay compensation starts from the third day of being off a huge part of the workforce keeps coming in sick, infect their team and as a result stay sicker for longer. This issue is worse even in situations with single parents.
People also get sicker much easily when they are under stress, don’t have time to look after themselves or don’t keep a healthy diet and regular exercise. Companies are getting to an understanding that investing in the health & wellness of their team increases productivity and actually saves them capital.
We’ve compiled a list of the creme de la creme of companies in Estonia that put their talent’s wellness at the top of their agenda. Let’s take a look at how we picked these companies first. When a company adds themselves to MeetFrank, they pick the things that are most important to them. To you, the talented, it looks like this:
And here let me we give you an overview of different benefits and perks on offer by companies in Estonia to keep their team’s health and wellness on point, resulting in a happier work life.
Health Checks
On top of the obvious benefits of health checks such as improving your overall health it can also help boost loyalty and morale at work. They benefit both the employee and employer greatly. When we feel appreciated at work we tend to also put more effort in.
Regular health checks are very important but sadly Estonians go to the doctors too late and underlying health issues get discovered in the late stages. By creating a culture where health checks are the norm we drastically increase the overall health at the workplace and of the population overall.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) identifies the following key risk factors to health, all of these could be addressed during a health check:
Smoking
Drinking alcohol
High blood pressure
High cholesterol
Obesity
High blood glucose
Poorly balanced diet
Lack of exercise
Regular health checks may give you enough of a push or advice to change some of your lifestyle choices for improving your health – such as quitting smoking or changing your diet. Determining factors that can develop into a health issue at an early stage can improve your overall health & wellness by quite a lot.
Benefits to team:
Access to info on their health
Reduced risks to their health
Improvement in performance
Better mental health
Benefits to companies:
Reduced sickness absence
Higher overall happiness of staff
Reduced turnover of staff
Improvement in productivity
Improved morale and loyalty amongst employees – taking extra steps for the health of the team improves overall work satisfaction
Here are some of the companies in Estonia that offer health checks on MeetFrank:
Check their profiles in the links to find out what they do and how they take care of their teams.
Even though Estonia has a pretty good functioning national health care system, if you need to see a specialist fast, it makes more sense to go private. There are enough private clinics to get seen fast, however it can get pricey – on average a private doctors’ consultation can cost you starting from 50€ per visit.
An Estonian startup Viveo Health is tackling this! They connect you to a network of doctors and clinics. You can get seen virtually within minutes, get referrals to specialists and get e-prescriptions pretty much instantly. Their network includes a medical staff of over 5000 professionals. The payments are handled by your employer. Currently there are 1000 people who have joined their service and in Estonia, you have this extra love if you work at Proekspert 🙂
Companies offering private health care or extra compensation
The right diet is crucial for your health and wellness. In fact, diet related diseases have reached the top causes of death, surpassing lung cancer.
Of the 56.9 million deaths worldwide in 2016, more than half (54%) were due to the top 10 causes. Ischaemic heart disease and stroke are the world’s biggest killers, accounting for a combined 15.2 million deaths in 2016. These diseases have remained the leading causes of death globally in the last 15 years according to WHO
When healthy eating is promoted collectively, it is much easier to keep in track. Discussing healthy food options and diets in the kitchen with your team while snacking on some fresh fruit and nuts available can go a long way.
These companies offer fresh fruit & veg in the office
Remote work is one of the most requested perks our talent in Estonia has requested on MeetFrank. Furthermore, there’s plenty of data that shows the positives of remote work far outweigh the negatives. Remote work has been researched quite a bit and it is one of the perks that works great for keeping stress levels down.
Personally I know the immense benefits – of course depends on your type of responsibilities however taking a few days to work from the peace and quiet of your own home without spending time on commuting can really make the team more productive. In addition to this it adds a sense of trust to your team.
Here are companies offering remote work in Estonia on MeetFrank:
Healthy food and health checks are a great way to improve the overall health and the team morale. However, you also got to keep you body healthy with some exercise. Sports events are also great for team building.
Team sports events benefit the workplace by:
Improving productivity
Increasing motivation
Increasing collaboration
Encouraging creativity
Improving communication
Here are some companies getting their team to be more active by offering SportID or gym membership:
Not all perks fit into strict frames. Health trends change quite a bit but some stuff is well tested and adopted. Think of what else may affect you at work? Sitting by a computer all day hurts your back and posture, the lighting and screen hurts your eyes. Here’s some more extra steps that employers are taking to keep their team healthy.
Testlio – on top of attending to almost every health benefit we brought out in this write-up, they have scheduled a mindfulness course in the office + 1 month paid sabbatical if you’ve been on the team for 5 years.
COMODULE do planking in the office and have a no-mess orange juicer!
Helmes goes all out with a sleeping capsule, table tennis, pool table, sauna, stretching track… Not bad at all.
Insly has a ping-pong room on top of many other perks. But also worth a mention that Insly has also won an award for a work-friendly environment many years in a row in Estonia. I must mention that I had the pleasure of working with some of Insly’s team and share an office with them some time back and they do indeed deserve the award 🙂
At Katana MRP by default your birthday is a day off – take time to celebrate moving to the next level!
Love cats? Turnit has an office furball called Maša.
Omniva and Swedbank have their own health track on site and Creative Mobile does Kouksundo in the office in the mornings.
Cash On Go will give extra paid 7-days winter vacation for employees who have been in a team for 2 years.
Guardtime has weekly yoga sessions and sauna to use at any time.
With all these perks and healthy lifestyle promoting activities many of the companies offer, there’s really little excuse to get healthy 🙂
Did you find some cool companies that align with your perfect workspace? Why don’t you check out if you’re a match on MeetFrank!
The health and wellness of a company’s team can make or break it. Regrettably, there are still a lot of companies that see employees as a cost rather than value. But the world is changing. The more successful ones have realised that the company relies heavily on how happy and healthy they keep their talent (the latter is especially important in colder climates).
So here we give you an overview of different benefits and perks on offer by companies in Lithuania to keep their team’s health and wellness on point, resulting in higher productivity.
Healthy Food
The right diet is crucial for your health and wellness. In fact, diet related diseases have reached the top causes of death, surpassing lung cancer. This is why having that extra push or something as simple as fresh fruit in the office is an important step towards the health and wellness of a company’s team.
Of the 56.9 million deaths worldwide in 2016, more than half (54%) were due to the top 10 causes. Ischaemic heart disease and stroke are the world’s biggest killers, accounting for a combined 15.2 million deaths in 2016. These diseases have remained the leading causes of death globally in the last 15 years according to WHO
As they say – an apple a day keeps the doctor away.
These companies offer fresh fruit & veg in the office
Remote work has become very popular in recent years. There have been many studies on the topic and giving your team the flexibility to work from where they choose can boost productivity quite a lot. By offering remote work, stress levels are reduced and on top you spend less time commuting.
Here are companies offering remote work in Lithuania on MeetFrank:
Health checks provided through work benefit both the employee and employer greatly. On top of the obvious – which is you know, improving your overall health it can also help boost loyalty and morale at work.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) identifies the following key risk factors to health, all of these could be addressed during a health check:
Smoking
Drinking alcohol
High blood pressure
High cholesterol
Obesity
High blood glucose
Poorly balanced diet
Lack of exercise
Regular health checks can help you identify an underlying problem and seek a resolution. Also, this may give you enough of a push or advice to change some of your lifestyle choices for improving your health – such as quitting smoking or changing your diet.
Benefits to team:
Access to info on their health
Reduced risks to their health
Improvement in performance
Better mental health
Benefits to companies:
Reduced sickness absence
Higher overall happiness of staff
Reduced turnover of staff
Improvement in productivity
Improved morale and loyalty amongst employees – taking extra steps for the health of the team improves overall work satisfaction
Here are some of the companies in Lithuania that offer health checks on MeetFrank:
Health checks and vaccinations go a long way however prevention is better than fixing the already developed issues. Keeping on top of regular exercise in addition to workload and family life can be hard.
In addition to the benefits of team building and getting to know each other on a more personal level, finding buddies to exercise with at work can have long-lasting effects – by instilling exercise and keeping fit in your company culture you can help your team keep this up regularly.
On top of this, team sports events benefit the workplace by:
Improving productivity
Increasing motivation
Increasing collaboration
Encouraging creativity
Improving communication
Here are some companies taking extra steps in recreational activities.
These companies provide gym membership or reimburse sport related expenses:
Cognizant – also provides (on top of what most do as well) special allowances in case of wedding, childbirth and bereavement. Paid leave to learn a new language. They actively promote blood and bone marrow donation in the office.
Vinted was also pointed out in many of the categories above and on top of this they have hammocks! Hammocks for your feet even!
If you have kids, Telia has invested in keeping a family friendly work culture by creating a kids zone in their office.
Health and wellness at work = a successful business
And there we have it – these 33 amazing companies put their money where their mouth is and make sure that the wellbeing of their team is a top priority. If you are working for a cool company that is doing something exceptional in this field and they were not mentioned, drop their link in the comments and we’ll reach out to them, 🙂
Did you find some cool companies that align with your perfect workspace? Why don’t you check out if you’re a match on MeetFrank!
