Jody Kaminsky is Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications for Ultimate Software, where she started 13 years ago as a writer. Ultimate is a human capital management software company with products that span a wide range of services, from payroll management to talent management to global workforce insight. Ultimate has received numerous awards over the years as a great place to work. In 2012, the company was named one of FORTUNE's 100 Best Companies to Work For.

Founder and CEO Scott Scherr started the company about twenty years ago. In a cool, virtual pamphlet about the people of Ultimate, he is quoted about what makes a good company: "The true measure of a company is how they treat their lowest paid employee." For a sense of who Scott is and the genesis of the Ultimate Software culture, you can watch this video.

I became interested in Ultimate a few years ago when the company offered to share my Team Trust Survey with their customer base as part of their support for humanistic management practices. More recently, they have asked me to do a webcast on leadership (available later this year), and I noticed the company's initiation of a "People First" marketing effort. It made me curious about the culture of the company. Jody kindly agreed to share her perspectives on what it's like to work for Ultimate.

Q. Jody, how is the culture of Ultimate Software different from other companies?

A. Before working at Ultimate, I worked for a well known global company ranked near the top of the Fortune 50. The experience could not have been more different from Ultimate -- and I recall the intense juxtaposition of cultures when I started working here. I remember noticing that employees here actually put Ultimate Software vanity plates on their cars -- something that would have been unheard of at any of my previous workplaces. I could see immediately that there was a huge difference in employee loyalty and commitment -- but it took a while to understand why the cultures were so different. Where I had worked previously was traditional and hierarchical. I was a tiny cog in a huge wheel, unable to see how I was contributing. By comparison at Ultimate, I found people intensely passionate about their work. They took their work personally. I've watched the company grow from 290 people to our current size of 1,400 employees and it's clear that same profound sense of contribution I felt when I started is alive and well today; that same feeling that you, too, can make a real difference. If you want to propose a new idea to benefit a customer, for example, you can do that and it doesn't take long to implement changes. There's very little bureaucracy.

Q. So what is it that actually drives that passion and desire to contribute?

A. This gets at what we mean by "People First." Most workplaces put their customers first, or put their services first. But based on Scott Scherr's example and philosophy, Ultimate puts its people first. I think it takes courage to stand behind this philosophy, but it's also very intuitive - how can you deliver exceptional products and services to customers if your employees themselves aren't passionate about your company? Although "People First" is a new way to say it, those words are really just a better articulation of the way the company has been all along.

Q. So what do these words really mean?

A. People First is the essence of who we are -- it's our key differentiator. According to Scott's philosophy, if you want your products and services to stand out in a crowded market, then you must have loyal employees first. Not every leader or company out there gets this. There's a bunch of lip service about this in the market place, but very little actual innovation in this area. It isn't talk here -- it's the actual practice of placing people first. You see this in how people are treated. We pay 100% of benefits. Everybody has equity. We're not going to squeeze people financially (although there's been pressure from time to time to do so). But perhaps even more important there's a company loyalty to people in times of adversity. During the tough economic times of the last few years, Ultimate has been fiercely dedicated to no layoffs. This is what our CEO personally believes in and lives. And there are stories of helping employees who have suffered catastrophes, for instance in the hurricanes, people who lost roofs or houses. We call this commitment to people the "Ulti Bubble." We know that the company will stand by us. We are protected, cared for, respected, and as a consequence, loyalty becomes a genuinely reciprocal thing.

Q. What happens if someone, for whatever reasons, doesn't fit with this culture?

A. I would say that this is a self-selecting environment. You can be successful if you want to have a deep personal stake in your work. People who are looking for self-promotion or padding a resume will not find Ultimate is for them. This is a values-oriented environment -- that's what drives us.

And there's no question about it, this is a very performance oriented environment. Poor performance isn't tolerated. As a manager, I feel extremely accountable about that. We have a sense of ownership and responsibility here for performance across the organization, rather than mandated rules, processes, and policies applied within our separate silos.

Q. So do people speak up here, for example if they believe that a manager is not operating in accord with the People First philosophy?

A. Yes, they do, and they know those concerns will be heard. I don't know that this is the way every business could operate, but it's the natural way our CEO operates, and we're lucky because he's created this culture and surrounds himself with people who will sustain it.

Leadership means something different here. It means a sense of being accountable for Ultimate's success across the board, not just in one small area. There are plenty of stories about this. Just recently, a customer wanted some last minute help getting out paper W2's (not something we see a lot of anymore). A note went around saying help was needed. People from all levels and areas of the company immediately responded, including top leaders -- and we all stuffed the envelopes together. Again, it's that personal stake, and when we get things done together in this way, it's really satisfying and people feel proud.

Q. You mentioned earlier that perhaps not every company could operate this way. Do you think Ultimate's culture can be benchmarked? Is it replicable by others?

A. I definitely think it can be benchmarked, but every company will have to find their own way into it. There's a good deal of data about the connection between human resource practices, company culture, and business success; for example, in Dr. Laurie Bassi's book, Good Company: Business Success in The Worthiness Era. 

The key is that these practices have to be truly authentic to you. You have to form a genuine employee culture. People are not dumb. There will be a backlash if you say you have that culture and you don't actually mean it. Our kind of culture can't be layered over one that's a problem. It has to come from the leaders and it has to be genuine to who they are as people.

Q. Can you say more about how your culture actually affects your business results?

This is one of the things I find most interesting about Ultimate's approach. A lot of HR people are struggling with the way things are in their companies. Over the last few years of recession, a lot of companies have gone backwards with regard to their culture. Although you can't just flip a switch and change a culture, when people find out about us and experience the company as customers and partners, they want to find out how we did it.

We do intend our culture to be a selling factor, but it's surprised me how large this factor is. We know that it is one of the top three reasons people go with us. At one level, it's obvious: if you buying HR software, why would you buy it from a place with a bad culture? But at another level, one that is self-selecting perhaps, we are seeing a general shift in companies toward wanting to create the kind of culture we have. When firms experience people from Ultimate, see their commitment and passion and personal stake - keeping a customer service representative on the phone until 4 AM, for example, when they need the help -- they naturally want to know more.