How Arcellx Built Trust on Their Distributed Team With Candor

About Arcellx

Company: Arcellx is a biotech company that’s inventing ways to destroy cancer and advance humanity through cell therapy.

Team: People Team, 9 teammates

Candor features: profiles, shoutouts, personal check-ins, work check-ins, polls

Team locations: Bay Area, Maryland

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Arcellx’s People team needed a better way to stay connected to their bi-coastal team

Kate Aiken, the Chief People Officer at Arcellx knew that her bi-coastal team needed a way to connect with each other outside of Zoom meetings. As a newly-formed team, they found the pace of getting to know one another way too slow. To be as effective as possible, she knew her team needed to connect and build relationships in a better way.

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Kate had two goals:

1. Find an easy way for her team to connect, even if they weren’t physically together
2. Find a way to embed connection into her team’s day-to-day

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Finding the right tool would help the Arcellx People team achieve these goals, and Kate had a few requirements:

• An engaging, fun tool that wasn’t a traditional HR tool. She wanted her teammates to actually enjoy using the tool and come back frequently to engage with it, without her needing to prompt.
• Easy user experience accessible to the whole team. Arcellx’s People team — though engaged in cutting edge technology to fight cancer — doesn’t consider themselves “techie”. They wanted something the whole team could use easily.
• A highly engaged support team that could respond quickly to requests and feedback. The team was interested in trying a new platform and was excited to contribute their feedback and influence the product development process.

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She knew old generation recognition tools weren’t right for her team and wanted to try something that felt more cool and fun.

“As a new team, we were slowly getting to know one another. Candor accelerated our team development and created an inclusive space where we all could share.” - Kate Aiken, Chief People Officer at Arcellx

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The Arcellx People team uses Candor to connect personally and professionally with each other

Kate first learned about Candor while at the annual HR Transform conference in Las Vegas, where she met the founder of Candor, Kelsey. She shared more about her People team and Kelsey suggested she try Candor.

Kate set up her free Candor profile so that she could share her work preferences, values, and motivations with her teammates. A month later, she decided to invite the rest of her team to do the same.

The team saw a lot of value in connecting with Candor profiles with over 75 takes added to their profiles collectively. They began learning new things about each other, both how they work best and who they are outside of work.

When Candor announced the first mission, Shoutouts, Arcellx decided to try it out so that they could do more regular recognition for their teammates. A couple of months later, the Personal Check-Ins mission was launched and they started using it to share more about their lives outside of work. They later adopted Work Check-Ins and Polls when those features became available.

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A more connected, happy team from east coast to west coast

A year ago, the Arcellx People team was just starting to get to know each other, made more difficult by the fact that they were on different sides of the country. Today, they use Candor to connect as a cohesive, distributed team.

After nearly a year of using Candor’s missions, Kate reports on a happier People team. The team interacts on Candor weekly, sharing shoutouts to recognize each other’s work, personal check-ins to share what’s happening outside of work, and much more.

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“Using Candor has created a new level of appreciation on our team – appreciation for each person’s unique talents, passions and what “makes them tick”! It’s a great tool for deepening relationships, building trust, working together effectively, and creating lasting bonds.” — Kate Aiken, Chief People Officer at Arcellx

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‍Connect with your remote team using Candor

Defining who we are as a team can be challenging. At Candor, we believe culture is about how you work, show up, and celebrate together. Culture is co-owned by the entire team.

Investing in culture makes work feel like play and creates a place where people love to be. The best part? It only demands 5-10 minutes each day. Candor helps remote-first teams connect and thrive through easy, async exercises.

Interested in trying Candor? Sign up here to start using everything Candor has to offer for free with your core team.