Growth doesn’t build culture. Leadership does.

Across Ottawa’s tech ecosystem, high-growth companies are navigating rapid change — expanding teams, evolving leadership structures, and adjusting to new operational demands — all while working to maintain strong employee engagement. While there’s no single formula, one thing is clear: organizations that listen consistently, act intentionally, and treat culture as an ongoing leadership discipline are better positioned to succeed.

As part of the IO ScaleUp Program, companies are supported with a semi-annual Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) benchmarking service that tracks how employee engagement evolves through different stages of growth. In the latest Fall 2025 round, Growcer, SureWx, and Knak emerged as top performers — offering three distinct examples of how intentional leadership and culture can drive strong employee advocacy.

Understanding eNPS 

If you’ve ever been asked whether you’d recommend your workplace as a great place to work, you’ve already participated in an eNPS survey. Based on a single question, responses are grouped into promoters, passives, and detractors, and combined into a score that ranges from -100 to +100. Within the IO ScaleUp benchmarking process, respondents also provide qualitative feedback and other data points to help leadership teams understand the “why” behind the score. Used alongside additional listening mechanisms, eNPS offers a high-level snapshot of employee sentiment, helping organizations track engagement trends over time and identify where deeper listening and action are needed.

With the latest benchmarking cycle complete, we invited our top scorers to reflect on the leadership principles and cultural practices behind their results. Here’s what the HR and people leaders at Growcer, SureWx, and Knak had to say.

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Behind the Curtain: Inside the Cultures Driving Top eNPS Results 

Growcer 

Building resilient food systems and a culture to match

Ottawa-based agricultural-tech company Growcer is focused on empowering local food resiliency. Through modular hydroponic farms and food infrastructure, Growcer enables communities, institutions, and organizations to grow and store local food year-round, regardless of climate. Built to operate in some of the world’s most challenging environments, the company’s technology supports sustainability and local economic development.

That same emphasis on intentional systems and long-term resilience also shapes how Growcer approaches company culture.

Designing Culture with Purpose

Growcer’s leadership team has taken a deliberate, evolving approach to culture — one grounded in reflection, feedback, and continuous improvement. Rather than assuming what employees value, the company has focused on actively listening and refining its approach over time.

 “It’s an iterative process,” shared Alida Burke, Co-Founder & CFO of Growcer. “We’ve been growing, maturing, and trying to get a little bit better year over year.”

A major step in that journey was gaining clarity around the company’s cultural “DNA.”

By refining its values into a shared framework, Growcer created a clearer sense of how teams work together and what the organization stands for — helping align vision, behaviours, and expectations through different stages of growth. Listening is another cornerstone of Growcer’s culture. Employees can share feedback through multiple channels — including anonymous options — alongside regular pulse checks such as eNPS surveys. Just as importantly, leadership emphasizes closing the loop.

 “When people give us feedback, we want them to see that it’s actually being taken into account,” Burke explained. “It’s not just going into the atmosphere.” 

Trust is also reinforced in Growcer’s approach to how work gets done. Operating within a hybrid model, teams are empowered to determine what best supports their roles — reinforcing autonomy while maintaining connection and collaboration. Underlying it all is a recognition that culture requires active effort, especially during periods of growth. From navigating rapid scaling to integrating new teams, Growcer’s leadership remains focused on being intentional — building culture deliberately rather than letting it happen by default.

Looking Ahead

Following a year marked by growth and expansion, Growcer is using its most recent eNPS results to inform planning for the year ahead. The focus is on sustaining engagement as the team scales — incorporating employee feedback into decisions around resourcing, communication, and future priorities to ensure the culture continues to grow alongside the business.

SureWx 

Mission-critical aviation technology, built on trust and continuity

SureWx is a global aviation technology company providing highly specialized weather intelligence used by airlines and airport operators to make critical operational decisions, especially during winter conditions. With customers across North America, Europe, and beyond, the company supports a large portion of global aviation operations where reliability, safety, and precision are non-negotiable. Operating in a mission-critical space, SureWx’s work demands deep expertise, long-term customer trust, and systems that perform under pressure — qualities that also shape how the company thinks about leadership and culture internally.

An Intentional Approach to Culture

SureWx’s approach to culture is rooted in respect for continuity, humility in leadership, and listening before acting. With many employees having been with the company for a decade or more, the leadership team has been intentional about not forcing change for the sake of it. Instead, they’ve prioritized understanding the company’s history — what has worked well, where friction exists, and how best to introduce structure without disrupting trust.

 “We’re trying to become the leadership team worthy of the team we inherited,” shared Kirsi Mararaj, Fractional Head of HR, on behalf of the SureWx Leadership Team.

This philosophy reflects both humility and deep respect for the organization’s long-standing culture.

A core philosophy at SureWx is resisting the temptation to overcorrect. New leaders are encouraged to start with listening tours rather than mandates, building trust and context before acting. Internally, this shows up as incremental change rather than sweeping overhauls — a counterintuitive but effective approach that has helped preserve engagement during periods of transition.

“We’ve resisted the temptation to come in and overhaul everything,” shared the SureWx team. “Instead, we’ve focused on listening first and making incremental changes that truly reflect what the business and our employees need.” 

This listening-first mindset is supported by a combination of regular engagement surveys, transparent follow-up, and ongoing dialogue between leadership and employees. Feedback is not only collected but acted on, with engagement metrics treated as a core business input and discussed at the highest levels of the organization. SureWx also operates as a remote-by-default organization, guided by the belief that great talent exists everywhere. Flexibility is treated as a feature of the employee experience rather than a fixed policy — with optional in-person touchpoints introduced only when they support productivity, collaboration, or wellbeing. This approach has enabled SureWx to hire globally while maintaining strong connections through intentional communication and team-wide gatherings.

Underlying it all is a deeply human-centered philosophy. Leaders spoke openly about treating employees as adults and as people first — offering flexibility during major life events, removing unnecessary rigidity, and creating space for different growth paths, including individual contributor tracks that don’t require management roles.

Looking Ahead

As SureWx continues to evolve, the focus is on adding structure where it’s most needed — without eroding trust or autonomy. Key priorities include strengthening top-down communication in a remote environment, improving clarity around change during periods of growth, and building greater team resilience through hiring and succession planning. Looking ahead, SureWx plans to continue using eNPS and engagement insights as guiding inputs — helping leadership calibrate pace, prioritize action, and ensure the employee experience evolves thoughtfully alongside the business.

Knak 

Scaling a high-performance culture through clarity and accountability

Knak is a codeless campaign creation platform built for enterprise teams, designed to help marketers move faster, collaborate better, and stay on brand. The platform supports a wide range of marketing automation integrations (including tools such as Marketo, Eloqua, and Salesforce/Pardot), making it easier for teams to build and launch campaigns without relying on developers or agencies. That same focus on precision and performance extends beyond the platform — it defines how Knak builds and scales its culture.

Clarity and Accountability in Action

Knak’s leadership team is candid about the reality of scaling: culture doesn’t automatically keep pace with growth. In their reflections, they noted there were periods where the employee experience wasn’t where it needed to be — particularly as the company scaled quickly — prompting a deliberate reset in how leadership approached alignment, hiring, communication, and responsiveness to feedback.

“Engagement comes from clarity and purpose,” shared Sarah Crandlemire, Senior Director, People Operations at Knak. “People need to understand the work they’re doing, how it connects to the mission, and why it matters.” 

Today, Knak focuses on building an environment where people can do the best work of their careers, anchored in a clear mission, values-driven leadership, transparency, and high ownership. Internally, they push back on a common misconception: that engagement comes from perks or surface-level initiatives. Instead, they emphasize clarity and purpose — investing in the employee’s understanding of what they’re working on, why it matters, and trusting leadership to listen and act.

That trust is reinforced through a set of practices woven directly into how Knak operates day to day. The company prioritizes acting quickly on employee feedback, aligns performance goals with shared incentives, and creates intentional moments for connection through team-wide gatherings. Operating in a hybrid model, Knak emphasizes clear communication rhythms and multiple channels for dialogue, ensuring feedback is surfaced regularly and followed by transparent action.

Knak also highlighted how IO’s ScaleUp eNPS benchmarking adds external context — helping them understand where they’re strong relative to other employers and where focus is warranted. In response to feedback on leadership communication and manager support, they introduced a Leadership Circle for managers to reinforce alignment, shared learning, and expectations around communication, feedback, and culture.

Looking Ahead 

Knak treats eNPS as an operating metric, something they’ll continue tracking as the company scales. The focus is on tightening fundamentals: leadership alignment, clear communication, consistent manager expectations, values-driven hiring, and rapid feedback loops when something isn’t working. As Knak continues to grow, they’re prioritizing scalable structure, so engagement remains strong through change.

The Common Thread 

Strong cultures aren’t built overnight – and they don’t endure or evolve by accident. As Growcer, SureWx, and Knak demonstrate, sustained engagement is the result of intentional leadership, clear communication, and the discipline to listen and act as organizations grow.

As Ottawa’s tech companies continue to navigate different phases of growth, maintaining strong employee engagement will remain both a challenge and an opportunity. The organizations highlighted here demonstrate that investing in leadership, culture, and meaningful engagement can pay dividends — not just in scores, but in stronger teams and more resilient companies. In the end, culture isn’t a byproduct of growth, but a reflection of leadership.

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For companies participating in the IO ScaleUp Program, eNPS benchmarking is one of several tools available to support intentional growth. To learn more, click here.