In September, the Leesa team participated in Culture Day 2019, a company-wide day of giving back and living our values at Leesa headquarters in Virginia Beach. From a Sleep Out to raise homelessness awareness the night before to making Welcome Home Kits and writing personal purpose statements, here's a look into Leesa's 2019 Culture Day.
Leesa team Sleep Out at headquarters
To kick off Culture Day, members of the Leesa team had the opportunity to Sleep Out to raise awareness and funds for homelessness. The team spent the night on the lawn at our headquarters in Virginia Beach. While most members slept on just cardboard and a sleeping bag, a few tested our donation mattresses.
In the morning, the group reflected on their eye-opening experience at sunrise.
For every team member who slept out, Leesa will donate 50 mattress to a charity of their choice. That’s 750 mattresses—750 safe places to sleep for someone in need.
1. We made Welcome Home Kits
1. We packed Welcome Home Kits for our local giving partner, ForKids, the largest provider of support for homeless families in the State of Virginia. The Welcome Home Kits include things like towels, laundry detergent, pots and pans and food. A small token to make their new house a home.
With every Welcome Home Kit, the family will also get a handwritten note from a Leesa team member, filled with encouraging messages of love and support.
2. We brainstormed ways to improve our donation mattress
With all of our products, we are constantly brainstorming and testing how we can make improvements—the same goes for the products we custom make for our giving partners. Our brand new donation mattresses come compressed in a box, just like the Leesa Original, Hybrid and Legend, and go directly to one of our giving partners to provide a safe place to sleep for those in need, especially children and families. We are constantly getting feedback from giving partners and their residents to find ways to improve their sleeping experiences and further meet the shelters' and nonprofits' needs.
On Culture Day, the team sat down with Leesa's Chief Product Officer and our Head of Global Supply Chain to brainstorm ways to improve our donation mattress experience—from the product itself to the box it comes in—to help make their new mattress feel more like home.
3. We shared stories from past giving events
Since Day One, we have based our success as much by our impact on world as by our bottom line. To date, we've donated 35,000 mattresses to those in need, working with more than 1,000 giving partners across the country and abroad.
The impact we are able to have as a company is because of our dedicated Leesa team members who embody our mission everyday. On Culture Day, many team members shared stories of impactful mattress giving trips they've been a part of with Leesa. From Steve's experience donating 200+ mattresses in Nicaragua with his son to Molly's trip to Oakland California to donate 300 mattresses and pillows to elementary school kids, every mattress delivery not only gave someone in need a safe place to sleep, but also had a lasting, meaningful impact on every Leesa team member.
Each employee chose a social impact photo and personalized it. Together, all the frames were hung on our Makers of Good wall in the office at HQ as a constant reminder of why we do what we do every day.
4. Employees wrote purpose statements
At Leesa, we strive to be Makers of Good—good products and more good mornings. Purpose is our heart and soul.
With that in mind, we asked every team member to write their own personal purpose statement to post on our Makers of Good Wall with their framed photo. There were statements about work, the Leesa team, giving back and employees' personal lives. The responses were moving, heartwarming and encouraging. Here, we're sharing a few:
