Creative and production work depend on team collaboration. We do this in small and large ways:
We have brainstorm meetings on new projects
We work across sister companies including thelab, dippin’ sauce, and David and Goliath
We partner across the globe – with teams in London, Australia, Turkey, and beyond.
While most of the focus of this collaboration is on building work, we also have a very connected digital culture (our Slack channels for Sports, and Culture are always hopping!)
It is a place to learn and grow – Wellcom has made a distinct move in the last year to hire junior talent so that we can nurture their careers. Instead of hiring mid level experience we looked for candidates in their first and second jobs to see if they could grow with the company. We have had fantastic success with that approach, as those junior producers or designers are stepping up and producing great work while also building a culture of mentorship at the company.
We also have company longevity. We just had a panel of employees who have been with the company for 18 years – about why they started, why they stayed and what they see coming.
The senior management of the company is accessible. We sit in an open floor plan with none of our executive leaders behind closed doors – they are out in the open with everyone and available to problem solve – or to talk about how the Jets played last night! We have sent out engagement surveys to everyone to make sure that our employees are feeling synced with the company. We also solicit feedback on big decisions – asking for all employees to weigh in on the return to work policy, for example. We took a poll and solicited feedback on how many and which days we wanted to come back into the office. That employee input was valuable for crafting our current hybrid policy of in person 2 days a week (Tuesday and Wednesday) for collaboration and culture.
– Willingness of the company to let them change and grow. All of those employees have moved into different roles and have built up different skills in the time with Wellcom so that they are able to change with the ever expanding industry
– Respect and autonomy from the top. While managers are happy to oversee and support as needed, Wellcom has a culture of letting employees manage themselves and their projects as long as they do so successfully, and ask such, no one feels like they are micromanaged
– Variety – because of the wide range of clients and projects we work on, no two days at the office are the same, which keeps our employees engaged and always learning. For better or worse, you can’t be asleep at the wheel – you are always engaged in doing something new. We pride ourselves on stretching to take on other responsibilities/duties beyond those we were hired for.
One of the things we are proudest of at Wellcom is that we stress to employees the importance of a work/life balance.
We put in place two hours of each day as Focus time – for employees to focus on themselves/their work/their health/their families. It’s time in the middle and the end of the day in which no meetings can be scheduled so everyone has time to grab lunch or pick up their kids or just be quiet and get some solo work done.
We want everyone to do great work, and deliver value to our clients but we want our employees to take care of themselves as well.
I assume you mean beyond the fancy coffee machines and the occasional pizza lunch?
Because our industry is always developing, continuing education has been an important part of our offering. We just wrapped a FIGMA training class for our Design team and we have had strategy, product management, and diversity and inclusion training for employees in the last year.
We also offer training session in office for things like time management, prioritization, and self-care because we want to make sure that employees aren’t just learning skills that benefit us as a company but benefit them as people.
So much of how we build a workplace that employees love is to make sure that they get feedback and career path conversations, which is why we have assessments and those review conversations twice a year. We are always open to conversations with our team members to make sure that they are as happy working with us as we are to have them.
Our company values creativity, entrepreneurship, and adaptation. Before being named Global CEO of Wellcom, David Bridges founded two creative production agencies, including thelab in 2002, which consistently challenged and expanded the definition of production service. The ability to adapt – in his case from print retouching to a e-commerce driven digital agency – is core to the vision of the company. Our small but mighty group is always evolving to maintain the best work for our clients in every medium. We are driven by creativity. The design – from how our office looks to the final websites we deliver – is important to David and he conveys that to all our employees.
Truthfully, we are standard with most companies of our size in terms of benefits – medical, vision, dental, parental leave, transit, etc. We are partnered with a large network benefits company, Insperity, so we do have access to a system of mental/physical/finance support systems that fulfills the needs of our employees.
Our newest benefit has been rolling out an unlimited vacation policy last year and that has gone over very well. We also went above and beyond to make sure that employees could take that time, and not be checking in with their teams back at the office while they were on holiday, by building in office closures. During the summer, every holiday weekend is a 4 day weekend in which we expect the company as a whole to rest and recharge.
We’re closing the gap between creative and production. And with 20 years of integrated production experience, we’re equipped to make it happen. We turn brand concepts into exciting and engaging content that is relevant and specific to each consumer segment. By consciously designing our creative to be maximized across channels, the work we create is both scalable and efficient.
175 Pearl St.
8th Floor
Brooklyn, NY
Advertising/Marketing/Public Relations
David Bridges
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