A company’s personality is composed of a variety of intangible, ingrained habits. For example, perhaps your team tends to exchange witty, sarcastic banter towards the end of the work day. Or maybe your staff has an unexplained, unwritten ritual of blasting 90s hip-hop after breaking for lunch as a way to boost energy. Is it possible to express those oddly essential aspects of your work-life? Among the internal team, the company’s atmosphere is unanimously understood and embraced. But to an outsider, how do you explain the intricacies of your organization?

It’s important to convey an established company culture to your team, but it’s more essential to communicate that information to a potential employee. Cultural fit is a key indicator of whether a candidate will succeed in a company. Hiring someone who is a poor cultural fit can not only decrease overall productivity and engagement within the company, but it can also waste time and money—up to $50,000 for each company’s bad hire, according to a study by CareerBuilder.

On-site interviews help to mitigate that risk, but rarely do they contribute any value to your current staff. Fortunately, WeVue benefits both candidates and a current employees.

WeVue—a mobile app that enables users to gather photos and videos from their phones and then turn that content into montages—aims to provide visibility into each company’s culture.

“The ability to visualize resonates so much more with everyone,” says Saxon Baum, co-founder of WeVue. “It brings about emotions, reactions, and instantaneous feedback.”

The humanizing element that imagery elicits was only part of Baum’s motivation to found WeVue with his first cousin, Taylor Wallace. Initially, Baum began WeVue with a desire to capture live events such as sports games and concerts on camera. With college classes and an internship in the music industry, Baum’s jam-packed schedule didn’t allow him to attend every event that he wanted to. His solution? Crowdsourcing.

“I knew that everyone had their phones in the air at every concert, but I wondered where all that content was going,” said Baum.

This was three years ago, before Instagram hashtags and Snapchat stories began to take hold of the crowdsourcing industry, and Baum’s app only had 20,000 users. Still, Baum knew he could do more. He began looking at trends: what people were doing with their applications, and how often they were using them. Through his research, he found an opportunity to switch the company’s focus from a consumer to an enterprise market.

Baum noticed that many HR managers and employees would set up company photo albums to highlight events. “If people were using this internally,” he says, “why couldn’t we make it a business platform?”

WeVue gives companies the ability to create shared photos albums that enhance their culture; for example, albums that highlight company events like holiday parties, competitions, and company outings. WeVue is completely mobile, and the crowdsourcing aspect of the app means that companies no longer need an HR manager to take charge of photos at any given event—anyone can be a part of the process.

By allowing companies to share content, WeVue strengthens employer brand and boosts recruiting efforts. Baum calls the app a “company culture solution.” Even if the company doesn’t tout modern office perks like ping-pong tables and beer taps, this honesty can aid both candidate and hiring manager.

“Some companies we work with aren’t ‘fun’ at all,” admits Baum, “but they like to show off their culture so that people won’t expect a fun environment. It helps to wean out non-cultural fits before they even apply.”

And for those who decide that the company is, in fact, right for them, WeVue offers a chance to meet future coworkers before even stepping foot in the office. By giving future employees a better feel for who they’ll be working with, WeVue can alleviate the discomfort of the first few days on the job and ease the process of assimilation into a new company culture.

Most importantly, WeVue promotes transparency—an important piece in the process of showcasing a company’s culture and values.

“Everyone thinks they have a great culture,” he says, “but the employees will really let you know.”

Baum makes a valid point: many managers, clouded by personal bias, are unable to perceive and therefore communicate their company culture objectively. WeVue offers them to take a step back and look at what their culture really is. It allows companies to capture the true spirit of their offices and open up fresh avenues of communication between management and employees. Since anyone can share videos and photos, everyone has a voice.  

“[We’re] going in to solve business problems and empower employees,” says Baum. “People outside boardrooms have ideas, and this allows them an outlet to get those ideas to the top.”

Ultimately, the goal of WeVue is to connect members of the workforce in dynamic and creative ways. Akin to gathering around and watching a home movie, watching a WeVue montage can give employees a different, more balanced perspective on their company culture. Plus, watching each other on the big screen is a bonding activity in itself.

Baum says that the app generates a type of content that is unique to WeVue. “You’re going to get raw content,” says Baum, “not content that someone has thought about for hours.”

By removing the polish of professionally edited and meticulously thought-out promotional videos, WeVue enables companies to promote who they really are and allows candidates to find their true cultural fit.