Kindra, a New York-based wellness company, used Pigment to make their team's communication styles visible to new hires from day one. By sharing Pigment trading cards as part of onboarding, they cut new hire ramp time from six to eight weeks down to two.
Who Kindra Is
Kindra is a New York-based wellness company that makes physician-backed, estrogen-free products for vaginal health. Their products are recommended by over 6,000 healthcare providers. Co-CEOs Afshan Dosani and Hasti Nazem lead a cross-functional team across growth, product, operations, and customer experience.
The Challenge
Kindra is a small team where new hires are expected to contribute quickly. The functional onboarding was solid: tools, processes, product knowledge. What wasn't covered was how the team actually communicates. New hires consistently spent their first six to eight weeks figuring out things like who needs time to process before responding, who prefers written context before a meeting, and who thinks out loud in a way that sounds like a decision but isn't one. That information lived entirely in Afshan's head. Every new hire had to rebuild it through trial and error, and in the meantime, meetings had avoidable friction and feedback conversations landed wrong.
Why Pigment
Afshan chose Pigment because it could make the team's communication styles visible before a new hire's first day. The assessment captures how someone processes information, gives and receives feedback, makes decisions, and collaborates. Instead of waiting two months for a new hire to decode the team through observation, she could hand them that information on day one.
What Kindra Built
Step 1: Build the Team's Communication Profiles
Afshan had the existing team take the assessment before any new hire started. She went first and shared her own results openly, including her strengths, what drains her, and how she prefers to receive feedback. That set the tone. The rest of the team followed, and each person pulled out the key parts of their report that would be most useful for a new colleague to know.
Why going first matters: Sharing your own profile before asking anyone else to changes the dynamic from evaluation to exchange. People open up because their leader opened up first.
Step 2: Use the Trading Cards
Each person's Pigment report generates a trading card: a snapshot of how they work, how they like to receive feedback, what energizes them, and what to watch out for. The team shared their trading cards with each other. These became the reference material for working together.
Step 3: Make It Part of Day One
When the next hire started, Afshan sent them the team's trading cards before their first day. The new hire walked into their first meeting already knowing: this person processes quietly and will follow up tomorrow with their real reaction. That person wants the agenda in advance. This one thinks out loud, so don't mistake brainstorming for a final decision.
Step 4: Have the New Hire Share Theirs Back
The new hire took the assessment during their first week and shared their own trading card with the team. This meant the adjustment wasn't one-directional. The existing team could adapt to the new person too, instead of expecting them to do all the adjusting.
The Outcome
The first hire onboarded with Pigment profiles was operating comfortably within the team in about two weeks, compared to the six to eight weeks Kindra had seen with previous hires. The difference showed up immediately. Feedback landed the way it was intended on the first try. Meetings ran without the friction that usually comes from people not yet knowing how their colleagues make decisions. The new hire later told Afshan the trading cards were the most useful onboarding material they'd ever received.
Our functional onboarding was always fine. What we couldn't onboard was how the team communicates. That's not something you can put in a handbook. But you can make it visible. Once we did, the ramp time collapsed. Our last hire was contributing like a six-month employee within two weeks.
Afshan Dosani, Co-CEO, KindraAdvice from the Kindra Team
Build the profiles before the hire starts. The material needs to be ready on day one. If you wait until someone's already struggling, you're behind.
Go first. Share your own communication profile before asking anyone else to. It sets the tone for honesty, not evaluation.
Keep the trading cards visible. They should be something a colleague actually references before a meeting, not something that gets filed away after onboarding.
Have the new hire share back. Onboarding works best when the existing team adjusts too, not just the person walking in the door.
