One of the things that visitors to our marketing agency in Farnham often comment on is the company culture. Many people seem to enjoy coming to our office to soak up the work environment and hang out with the team!
It’s something we care about passionately. Sharon, Andrew and I didn’t launch Hyped to create any old marketing agency. We wanted to build something different, give our clients a great service, and provide ourselves with a work environment and culture that we want to get out of bed for. Having worked in various design, marketing and PR agencies in our professional careers, we wanted to create something that attracts likeminded people to us – both clients and employees.
While clients often shape the kind of work an agency does, it’s the team that creates the culture and this filters through to the way we work, the quality of work and our client relationships. As such it is very important to us that we’re listening to everyone involved about their experience.
As a director I know that my experience of Hyped is different to that of the rest of the team. That means I’m not a reliable barometer of the mood in the office or what life at Hyped Marketing is actually like.
But I wanted to find out…
So I asked Molly, who’s currently spending an hour a week in the office as part of her Duke of Edinburgh award, to create an anonymous survey to get an insight into how the team are doing. I wanted to know if they’re happy, getting recognition for their work, coping with pressure (some clients are demanding!), and fulfilling their potential.
Although I was keen to get some positive feedback, I was most interested in the areas where Hyped isn’t scoring 100%. That’s because I believe that by addressing these areas, however inconsequential they may seem, it can deliver massive benefits to the business as a whole.
An associate once told me a story about their performance reviews and how the overwhelming feedback from their team was that they were happy but no one liked the office carpet! Employees found the sludgy, brown institutional carpet depressing. Making this one little change reaped more rewards than you can imagine. Employees felt valued, listened to and cared about, and the impact of a new carpet boosted morale and made the office environment a much better place to be.
In our survey results carpeting was not an issue (although blinds may be a problem) but there were other areas that our team flagged up, which we are now addressing. Here’s what we learnt.
EMPLOYEE SURVEY – WHAT THE HYPED TEAM SAID
Overall we were pleased to see that most of the team are very happy working at Hyped, that communication between colleagues is very good and that the general mood in the office is positive.
Most of the team also feel they are getting recognition for their hard work, regular feedback from supervisors, and using their specialist skills to the max. However, there are a few areas where people felt there is room for improvement and so we have implemented the following ideas:
- Weekly company meetings – to ensure that everyone has the big picture on all the work we’re doing, and where they fit into each project, we’re setting aside time on a Monday morning to look at the week ahead. This is helping everyone work more collaboratively and provide each other with support.
- Professional development – we’re focusing resources on training opportunities for our team so they can upskill or gain relevant experience that will help our clients and business, as well as for their own career progression.
- HR guidance– we’ve realised that it’s time to invest in some additional HR support across the business to ensure that we are doing the best for our staff.
- Having a say – feedback from our employees included wanting to be part of decisions that affect them, such as restructuring the office layout. So we’re making sure that everyone gets a say in all office related decisions.
- Responsibility and ownership – everyone in our team are keen to step up and take more responsibility especially in relation to working with clients. Therefore they will be taking on the ownership of specific projects and on-going client work, so they can really see how their involvement is delivering results.
Our Life At Hyped survey has been really interesting and has certainly revealed a few things that hadn’t occurred to me. It’s also been great to see that generally everyone is motivated and enthusiastic about Hyped, which is exactly what I had hoped. We’ll be using these survey results as a benchmark for the future and so that we can continuously improve our employee experience and culture.
