How Soundboks achieved peace of mind about their contracts.

Trouble with the basics

Soundboks has been one of the most successful startups coming out of Denmark in the past decade. The company was founded as a classic garage startup in 2014 by a group of friends that used to go to music festivals together and saw the pains of not having the right speaker system. As a solution, they built a mobile speaker that could accommodate the volume and durability needs of a proper festival party. Since then, they haven’t looked back. Soundboks was the youngest company to participate in Y Combinator’s accelerator programme, enabling them to scale their business worldwide with Denmark, Germany and the US as their core markets.

In the beginning, they would sign their contracts by hand. As their Chief People Officer, Hans August Carlander, told us, he valued the old-school model. He found the event of signing the deal together valuable and wanted to have that in person.

“Fast forward three years, we were having troubles with the basics,” Carlander said. It was hard for Soundboks to ensure everyone worked with the right templates and the latest updated version. Furthermore, the filing of the contracts quickly became a mess, so it was hard for them to find their contracts.

Hans August Carlander said their challenges primarily were scalability and security.

A smooth workflow

With Contractbook, Soundboks now have a smooth digital workflow for their employment contracts. It works like this: Once they’ve found their new hire and settled the negotiation around compensation, Soundboks’ talent acquisition team ships a contract to Hans August Carlander for a compliance check. He will review the contract and make sure all the details around salary, holiday etc., are correct.

After it’s reviewed, he signs it, and it’s automatically shipped to the new candidate, including a nice welcoming note for them to sign when and where they wish. If the candidate has any comments, they can add them directly in the software. However, 95 % of the time, it’s signed right away, so they can begin their onboarding process.

Simple and easy.

Peace of mind

Soundboks have tripled their headcount in recent years. Via their Contractbook setup, everything has been running without hiccups. As Hans August Carlander mentioned: "Since we started with Contractbook in 2018, it has been so much more stable and scalable to run our employment contract digitally."

Most of their new employees are young, digital natives that prefer a digital experience. "It's a better experience because there is fantastic UI, and the signing process is seamless. It's easier and more transparent and smooth for new team members joining," Carlander said.

When you have the contract with you at home, you have more time to review it for yourself without feeling intimidated by the physical presence of the other party. That makes it more comfortable for new recruits to suggest changes and sign without pressure.

Still, the most important value that Soundboks gained from using Contractbook is the foolproof workflow in their People's department. It ensures that Hans can feel comfortable that everything is in order.

"Contractbook enables us to work as a team. We can easily share templates with each other, collaborate on the documents, and oversee the entire team's legal work, so we can rest assured that everything runs smoothly. It gives me peace of mind knowing that we have everything in Contractbook, " said Hans August Carlander.

Focus on your people

People’s and HR teams like Soundboks’, usually benefit from Contractbook’s tailored HR workflows that enables automated workflows for your employment contracts so you can focus less on paperwork and more on people.

You can integrate Contractbook’s contract management software with the rest of your HR tech stack to ensure everything runs smoothly. You can auto-generate employment contracts based on external data input and automate reminders to stay on top of all your renewals, deadlines and legal obligations.