Raleigh’s Bandwidth was built for God. But the tech company hasn’t been for everyone.

In 2018, the Raleigh telecommunications firm Bandwidth invited employees to share photos of their children, which the company designed into a collage and hung at its office on N.C. State University’s Centennial Campus. The poster featured text in the middle: “Kids of the band” — and a Bible verse beneath.

“’Be fruitful and multiply’ – Genesis 1:28.”

Since moving into its new $100 million headquarters last summer, Bandwidth no longer displays this collage or verse. The publicly traded company also stopped hiring a chaplain from the Wake Forest-based Corporate Chaplains of America to offer employees consultation. (CCA says its chaplains are trained to serve workers “representing many different religious backgrounds” but the organization’s Statement of Faith reads, “We believe that the Bible as originally written is the inspired, infallible, and inerrant Word of God and the supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct.”)

But another religious practice remains routine. Since he started the company in 1999, Bandwidth cofounder and CEO David Morken has opened quarterly all-staff meetings with a prayer.

“It’s pretty typical if you’ve been to any evangelical church,” said a current Bandwidth employee, who was not authorized to speak by the company. “He always prefaces it with, ‘I’m a man of faith, and I like to give credit where I feel it’s due. So, I’m going to start with a prayer. And you’re welcome to join me if you like, or otherwise, you can just sit there.’”

In a recording obtained by The News & Observer of a virtual staff meeting in April 2020, Morken addresses the COVID-19 pandemic, saying, “Lord, I am just believing that we are seeing the worst of it, and that you will end this. And that you are only good. In Jesus’ name, I pray.”

Such invocations from its CEO make Bandwidth stand out among other technology companies. The industry as a whole skews significantly less religious, with roughly half of U.S. tech workers identifying as atheist or agnostic in an often-cited 2018 survey by the center-right think tank Lincoln Network (now the Foundation for American Innovation), compared to only 7% of all Americans.

“I’ve been in the professional workplace for 32-plus years at a handful of different companies, and never experienced anything like prayer,” said Joe Micciche, an engineer who worked at Bandwidth from 2018 to 2020. “I actually asked HR if it was acceptable or legal to do that.”

Employers may incorporate prayer in business meetings, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says, so long as workers aren’t compelled to join.

Bandwidth today employs 1,100 workers globally, around 800 of whom work from Raleigh. The firm enables mass text messaging services, with demand rising ahead of elections as campaigns race to mobilize voters. It also provides voice over internet protocol, or VoIP, which facilitates video chats on platforms like Zoom or Microsoft Teams.

As Bandwidth has grown, adding more than 700 employees across two continents from 2018 to 2022, those who have worked there say evangelical tenets around faith and family continue to underpin its culture.

Some employees said they didn’t mind the company’s religious aspects, while others undoubtedly have found it familiar. A number of current Bandwidth employees previously worked at nondenominational churches, including at least five, according to LinkedIn, who held positions at The Summit Church, a Baptist evangelical church with multiple Triangle locations. In 2021, Bandwidth cofounder Henry Kaestner wrote a book titled “Faith Driven Entrepreneur” with Summit’s pastor, J.D. Greear.

“It is very clearly a safe place to be a Christian,” said Kate Canfield, a former manager in Bandwidth’s marketing department. “So the typical taboo of bringing up religion in the workplace doesn’t exist the same way there in my experience. Different than any other office I’ve worked in.”

But multiple Bandwidth workers said their employer’s focus on faith and family made them feel uncomfortable.

“A lot of us would go to the (staff) meeting a little late to avoid the prayer,” said Paul Kraff, a senior learning and development manager at Bandwidth from 2019 to 2021. “We would either loiter out in the common area or hang back in our building.”

Multiple former workers described occasions when Morken or other managers asked about their personal relationships in a way that felt odd. Some spoke to The N&O on the condition of anonymity to avoid affecting future jobs prospects.

“There were definitely questions around, like, ‘Are you planning on getting married? Are you planning on moving in with your partner?’” said an England-based employee who joined Bandwidth when it acquired the Belgian telecommunications firm Voxbone in 2020. “And I was like, these are sort of weird questions to ask.”

Kraff recalled that Morken once asked about “his bride” upon noticing his wedding ring during an initial morning meet-and-greet event, called “Breakfasts with Morken.”

Adding staff from Europe was also a change for the growing Bandwidth; when former Voxbone employees witnessed Morken pray during their first virtual meeting after the acquisition, several expressed astonishment on their internal communications platform Slack.

“Especially in Europe, we have a culture of secularism when it comes to business,” the UK-based employee said. “Like the whole idea of you don’t talk about politics, sex and religion.”

Bandwidth acquired Voxbone during an exciting period at the Raleigh firm. Months into the pandemic, the company’s stock shot up to an all-time high, above $180 a share, as investors bought into the long-term promise of video communication platforms. Bandwidth at the time predicted 20% annual growth said Ryan Koontz, an analyst at the investment firm Needham & Co.

In the intervening years, however, enthusiasm for these platforms has dimmed and Bandwidth’s stock plunged to below $10. (It has since rebounded to around $15 a share.)

“Regarding the whole voice and messaging business, the luster is off the rose, so to speak,” Koontz said. “Investors started looking at profitability rather than it being a sustainable, high-growth platform play that’s going to change how we do businesses.”

Bandwidth went from 378 workers in 2018 to 1,100 globally by the end of 2021. Yet its headcount has since plateaued, and in January, the company asked North Carolina to terminate its 2020 incentive agreement to create 1,165 jobs in Wake County. In its request letter, Bandwidth declared it exited the deal to gain “greater flexibility” to hire workers beyond its sprawling Triangle campus.

As Bandwidth has gone from startup to global firm, its Christian-based origins endure in ways explicit and subtle. This unique culture has encountered, and at times clashed with, the realities of running a large publicly traded company in an industry with a predominantly secular workforce. Growth stalls. COVID-19 policies must be put into place. Workers join who have complicated relationships to religion.

While the company has gone through changes, its founder’s faith in its mission hasn’t.

Founded for the glory of God

Morken, 54, has long been vocal about his Christian faith. His father taught religion at Oral Roberts University, a private evangelical school in Oklahoma from which Morken graduated. In past interviews, he described himself as “a Jesus freak,” who will occasionally duck under his desk to pray. Morken has said he started Bandwidth after telling his wife he thought doing so was God’s will.

“He’s a preacher who happens to be a businessman,” former Bandwidth president and current board member John Murdock told Business North Carolina in 2019.

Morken took Bandwidth public in 2017, and at the top of quarterly calls with investors, he will briefly mention God when expressing general gratitude. But he reserves longer, more detailed prayers for staff meetings and other events. At the 2019 N.C. Technology Association Awards ceremony, Bandwidth executives joined Morken to recite what an attendee from a different company said was “a multi-minute standing prayer” around the two tables Bandwidth had reserved.

Outward displays of faith typify evangelicalism, says Grant Wacker, an emeritus professor of Christian history at Duke University Divinity School. “Evangelicalism is always wear your faith on your sleeve,” he said. “That’s just part of the DNA. Externalization of the faith is just crucial. And the idea of just having a faith and sort of keeping it to yourself is foreign.”

This sentiment is confirmed by Bandwidth’s other cofounder, Kaestner, who states in an online biography, “The founding values of Bandwidth are: faith, family, work, and fitness (in that order).”

Kaestner left Bandwidth in 2018 and went on to found a faith-based investment firm. The year he exited the company, Kaestner gave a talk on “The Business Lessons that God has taught us at Bandwidth.com” in which he wrote in his speech draft, “We firmly believe that our success has come from God, and that it’s for his glory that we work.”

Together, Kaestner and Morken still control around 46% of company voting shares. According to public financial filings that gives them “significant influence” over Bandwidth’s operations. The tech firm remains founder-led, with Bandwidth telling regulators its operations “depend to a considerable degree on the vision, skills, experience and effort of our Chief Executive Officer, David A. Morken.”

The principles Morken prioritizes personally emerge at the workplace he created.

On fitness, Morken has completed ultra bike relays and Ironman competitions. He was a member of the Marine Corps Triathlon team. At Bandwidth, the new Raleigh campus has a “state-of-the-art” fitness center, the company says, and employees are allowed to extend their lunch breaks by 30 minutes to meditate, walk, work out or play an intramural sport.

On family, Morken has six children with his wife, Chrishelle, whom he frequently refers to publicly as his “bride.” Bandwidth has a child development center at its headquarters, and company insurance includes no copay for childbirth. Bandwidth refers to its family benefit package with the phrase “free babies.”

“The maternity leave can’t be beat and the health insurance coverage for your family at no premium is amazing,” reads a 2019 anonymous employee review on the female-focused, Durham-based platform InHerSight. The reviewer added, “The CEO truly cares about his employees and their families.”

Another post that year called Bandwidth “heaven on earth.”

Bandwidth dubs its benefits approach the “Whole Person Promise.” Like many companies, it insists its motto goes beyond words, and the company has received accolades for offering strong perks, including two days off for major life events like getting married, birth of a grandchild, employees’ first and every fifth wedding anniversaries, buying a house, and a child’s graduation. Bandwidth calls these milestones “mahalo moments,” using the Hawaiian word for gratitude.

Some former employees said the support Bandwidth gives starting families can spill into promotions.

“The emphasis was very much that they wanted you to have children,” said an engineer who left the company in 2020. “Its culture felt very narrow. Work out. Have kids. Read leadership books. Play intramural sports. All these things built this image, and if you didn’t do them, it felt like you didn’t belong.”

In emailed answers to the N&O, Bandwidth rejected claims that the company encourages employees to have children.

Growing families is a cornerstone of evangelicalism says Wacker, the Duke professor emeritus, pointing out this religion puts a premium on family-oriented leadership.

“This is all part of God’s plan.,” he said. “The public ideology is that children are a blessing.”

An ‘in group’ and an ‘out group’

In the draft of his speech about what Bandwidth learned from God, Kaestner wrote he believed everyone who worked at the company felt “valued and not judged” regardless of their beliefs or background.

However, some former employees said Kaestner’s claim of inclusion didn’t match their work experience. Several who worked at the company within the past five years described the existence of an “in group” and an “out group” in the workplace, at times literally.

An agnostic, Micciche said he repeatedly voiced his discomfort with Morken’s words to management. “After every all-hands meeting, they would ask for feedback,” he said. “And every time I would put the same thing, ‘Do you think it’s a great idea to lead off with the Christian prayer?’”

Micciche said he never got a response.

“Bandwidth has always had an open-door policy at every level of the company for concerns to be shared and addressed,” company spokesperson David Doolittle said.

Multiple former employees said the religious overtones of the workplace made them guarded.

“The people at Bandwidth who were atheists, who weren’t religious, you would never catch us talking about our beliefs because you would fear you might get passed up for a promotion, that senior leadership would look at you differently,” said a former employee who worked in human resources.

A former sales representative who identified as Christian and politically “center to right” shared his sense that colleagues who were more outwardly religious “knew it was advantageous and advertised it.”

Doolittle said Bandwidth provides “equal employment opportunities” to staff regardless of their “race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, veteran’s status, physical or mental disability.”

“Our Whole Person Programs and our culture have evolved to meet the needs of Bandmates as we grew from a small local startup to the global public company we are today,” he said.

Pandemic policies rankled

Morken, a registered Republican, doesn’t mention politics in the workplace. In a video obtained by The N&O that was recorded days after the murder of George Floyd, he addresses his desire to keep social issues out of the office entirely, saying, “We just don’t have a lot of opinions in this room about stuff and online. Our customers (are) from all walks, so I got to respect that. But thank you for asking, and if you think less of me for that and need to go to a team where there’s an outspoken leader on societal stuff, peace, get it.”

This departed from scores of technology companies — including Apple, Cisco and Facebook (now Meta) — which voiced public support for racial equity after Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police office in May 2020. In a tweet that spring, Netflix wrote, “To be silent is to be complicit. Black lives matter. We have a platform, and we have a duty to our Black members, employees, creators and talent to speak up.”

Some were disappointed in Morken’s stance. “That was a clear delineation to some employees that Bandwidth was not here to share our values, it was there for you to share its values,” the former engineer said.

But it was Morken’s response to COVID-19 that left more employees angered with how his beliefs appeared to guide company policy. In one all-staff meeting early in the pandemic, Morken said he wished he could travel to China to catch the illness to prove it wasn’t a big deal. Bandwidth never mandated employee vaccinations and only required masks while Wake County made it law.

In June 2021, Bandwidth became an outlier among Triangle companies by mandating employees return to the Centennial Campus office five days a week.

“I do think that ... there is a real decaying half-life to a vibrant company culture when you are remote,” Morken told the N&O at the time. “I understand that is a conviction that not everybody shares. But we want to be a team that attracts others who value being in the moment, being present, collaborating together — through agony or ecstasy — just like you want to be present in life moments.”

Bandwidth’s back-to-office rule stirred resentment toward Morken, particularly as North Carolina’s COVID case totals increased throughout the summer. The company eventually backtracked on its in-person requirement before reinstating the policy the following year.

In September 2022, The N&O spoke to one current and two former Bandwidth employees who objected to the company’s policy.

“Everyone has wondered exactly what could motivate this fervent of an effort to return to office,” said Andy Feller, a software engineer who left Bandwidth in August 2021. “However none of the responses seemed genuine or significant to justify it.”

Attracting the widest talent pool?

Many Bandwidth employees communicated their dissatisfaction with their feet; by the end of 2022, around a quarter of workers had been with the company for a year or less. In an annual report released the following year, Bandwidth said it had experienced “higher than usual employee turnover rates,” since 2020. While elevated turnover rates were common across the tech industry during this period, multiple people who departed Bandwidth linked their decision to Morken’s pandemic work policies.

“I was so happy there with the leaders in my department,” said former marketing manager Canfield, a single mother with three children. “When they said you have to come back five days a week, I started looking for a new job.”

Organizations forge distinct cultures, says Ann Close, a human resources consultant in Cary, and that culture will generally, though rarely exclusively, attract like-minded people who want to join “something bigger than themselves.”

“Every business has the right to decide what they want to do,” she said. “And if they do, they have to realize that not everyone will feel the same way. It’s important to tell people ahead of time that’s what it’s about.”

Close identified her own consulting firm as faith-based, and said she informed her handful of employees early in the hiring process of the regular workplace prayers she conducts.

Doolittle said Bandwidth is a “secular” company. However, several former employees were surprised to encounter faith signifiers soon after they joined. Canfield, who grew up going to an evangelical church, said she found Morken’s prayer “jarring.” Kraff said he was also taken aback when he attended his first meeting.

“I immediately started assessing, ‘What did I get involved with?’” he said. Both former employees said they hadn’t experienced prayer by the CEO of a company before joining Bandwidth, nor have they since.

As general best business practice, technology companies should sidestep turning off potential applicants, says Richard Warr, a finance professor at N.C. State University.

“Pulling from the largest possible pool of talent is always the best strategy,” he said. “Especially for a technology company, hiring the best people is a major way to increase value.”

To shareholders, workplace activities only matter as far as they impact a company’s value, Warr said.

A share of Bandwidth sells for around $15 today, about 25% less than its debut price seven years ago.

“They’re going to put up some pretty strong numbers, I think, around the election,” said Ryan Koontz, the Needham analyst. “It’s a one-time cycle. The question is, How much credit do investors give you for something that happens every four years? The results will look great in the headlines, until next year, when it becomes more difficult, when your revenues might be down 10%-plus instead of up 10%-plus.”

It is difficult to quantify how Bandwidth’s culture affects who applies to work there — or how long they remain at the job. The prayer, COVID-19 policies and questions about personal relationships alienated segments of the company’s growing number of employee base, some of whom have posted their displeasure in recent years on platforms like Reddit and the employee review website Glassdoor. Yet Bandwidth’s child development center, “Whole Person Promise” and regular placement on The Triangle Business Journal’s recent “Best Places to Work” lists may convince more talent to come.

And within a notably secular sector, some Christian job candidates may cherish a company founded on “faith, family, work and fitness.”

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