Our Culture is a WorkInProgress

You often hear leadership say, "Company X is great because of the culture." But talk of culture is often vague and without specific examples. Back in July, WorkInProgress was recognized by Ad Age for its culture. So, I thought I’d share some specifics about ours. This is not to say everything we do is amazing. But I hope that sharing specifics will make talk of culture more tangible, and help inspire others.

?Our agency philosophy is that we believe every brand, and person, should be a work in progress. And to progress, you must take action. Each item below is an action we've taken, big or small, to make WIP better. And while I'm sharing what we do today, it is not set in stone. It is a work in progress, inspired by listening to our employees and adapting.

We created the WIP Fund, where every employee can put up to $1500 a year, every year, towards being a work in progress. Thus far that has included home gyms, camera equipment, flight lessons, dog training, software subscriptions, travel to new places, knitting supplies, an art studio, shoe making, oil painting, kickboxing, muay thai, a cricut, leather crafting, glass blowing, and so much more.

We introduced a program called WipTok, where employees can volunteer to create content for the WIP TikTok account and are compensated $500 a month in addition to their salary.

We close the agency for a week in the summer and two weeks at the end of the year. We have an additional 11 paid holidays, which includes four-day weekends for Memorial Day and Labor Day and three days off for Thanksgiving instead of two. And we have unlimited PTO. But given not everyone is good at proactively scheduling time off, we build in a lot of vacation.

We offer 3 months of parental leave for birth and adoption, and 1 week for foster placements.

We reward employees who spend 5 years at WIP with a 4 week mini-sabbatical and $2500.

We pay for 75% of health care premiums for employees and 50% of the premiums for all others added to their plan. And picked top tier health care plans, including a service for free mental health sessions. For employees that choose the HSA option, we contribute $1000 for individuals and $2000 for families.?

We offer relo with additional money for partners/significant others, children, and pets.?

We contribute 3% of salary to a 401k for every employee 90 days after they start, and there’s no vesting period.

We have an end of the year agency performance bonus that’s 5% of salary. Thus far, we’ve done it every year.

?When we have a performance bonus built into a client contract, we share it with every person at the agency, whether you work on that account or not. Either way, you contributed to that account, whether literally, or by working on a different account so people could work on the other one.

If an employee is instrumental to connecting us with a new client, then they receive 2% of WIP's fee in year 1, 1% in year 2, and 1% in year 3.

We hardly freelance. It can be demoralizing to bring in highly-paid outsiders to work on the great briefs you could give your FT team. If we do freelance, it is to provide coverage so people can take vacation.

We commonly pay out of pocket to send additional creatives to shoots, so everyone responsible for the idea can be there or so new people can learn and meet the clients.

As we grew, we brought on an incredible head of People and Culture, LaTonya Jackson. Among her many roles, she examines pay equity for current employees and new hires, including when there are raises and promotions.

?We assign mentors and use a platform called Lattice to do annual 360 reviews.

We formed a WorkInProgress Employee Council that 17 employees volunteered to be a part of, so that everyone’s voice can be heard even after more than doubling in size.

We partnered with AllVoices, to give employees a safe place to anonymously send feedback or speak about workplace issues.

Every other month, we do an agency breakfast where we give a full new biz update, status of our current accounts, and agency updates. At the end, we open it up for a Q&A.

We formed a DE&I Board with three awe-inspiring members who we meet with quarterly and can reach out to for advice between meetings. Thank you to Keni Thacker, Chris Edwards, and Jolly Northrop for your guidance, support, and brilliance.

?We share our data publicly on agencydei.com and have set short-term and long-term goals.

We set diversity casting goals with our clients, and diversity goals for those behind the camera as well.

We’re in the beta phase of Opening Shot, a new platform that helps people from disadvantaged backgrounds attend an advertising shoot, fall in love with advertising, and inspire those who would have never considered it an option to join the industry.?

?We partner with the Boulder Valley School Districts School to Work Alliance Program that assists students with disabilities in making the transition from school to employment, which includes students job shadowing for 6 to 8 weeks.

?Our Creative Resource Manager, Mandy Henderson, is a former therapist, where she provided individual and family therapy for children, adolescents and young adults with ASD and their families utilizing holistic strategies for care continuity in the home and school environments. She brings this unique perspective to helping manage the workloads of creatives and designers.

We allow pets in the office, of course. (And have a dog bone library.)

We have a no assholes policy. No amount of talent can make being an asshole acceptable.

On the flipside, we don’t just want people that are just nice. We want people that are nice and incredibly talented at what they do.?

Potential candidates interview with a lot of people at WIP. It is a deal breaker for some, but if we're bringing someone new into our agency, we want a lot of people to vet their vibe first.

Every Monday morning we ask people on slack to tell us about their weekend in 5 words. And every Friday on our #HumansofWIP slack channel we ask a new fun and revealing question. We also celebrate every WIP anniversary and birthday on Slack, and give gifts for each.

We look for red flags during pitches, and in some cases when we’ve still had doubts, we asked to do a 3-month project instead of the 12-month contract they were offering.

Starting Tuesday, August 9th, we’ve been in the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Throughout COVID while working remote, we consistently communicated our desire to be in person some of the time in the future. New hires over the last two years, moved to Colorado even though we were still 100% remote. We choose to have two fixed days a week, to avoid all meetings being video meetings because people were choosing different days to come in. Why be in person at all? We believe fully remote puts employees at the earlier half of their career at a huge disadvantage when it comes to learning and mentorship. Secondly, we want our agency to be a reason people move to Boulder and Denver, so that we can positively impact the culture and diversity of the cities and state we call home. We know two days a week isn’t for everyone, but WorkInProgress doesn’t have to be for everyone.?

?Lastly, we constantly work to be an organization with emotional intelligence. Something I recently spoke about at AWNY. We are flexible, empathetic, and respect people and their time. This affects everything we do. Down to how and when we schedule creative rounds, give feedback, and avoid a process where work gets blown up last minute internally causing unnecessary scrambles and frustration.

I'm very proud of what we've been able to do so far, but I am excited to grow and evolve this list in the years to come.