We’re unlike any other agency on the entire planet.
We ensure that our team DO NOT work more than their core hours. Because spending time with family, friends or just doing whatever you need to do to chill out is far more important.
Our mantra is “You can only do what you can in the time that you have”. If additional time is ever needed on projects, then we pay overtime at time-and-a-quarter during evenings and time-and-a-half on weekends. But this is not expected – it is optional, by request. And in reality, no one even works additional hours anyway because we’re so good at ensuring the clients, projects and timelines are managed so well that there’s never any need to.
We’re also family friendly, offering part-time, casual hours and term-time contracts.
It’s because of our culture that we have such a brilliant team. Being a 100% remote-working team means we’re not fixed to a single location, so we can hire the right people, wherever they live and whatever their circumstances.
We live a life-first culture. Our team work whenever, however and wherever they like. We’re an enormous fan of freedom in the workplace, so there are only three rules:
Basic benefits:
We set up the company to be a remote-only company back in 2016 – this was a bold and unusual move back then. But I wanted to ensure people could have maximum time with their families and friends. No one was missing bathtime with their kids or wasting their lives in traffic jams on my watch.
This approach is completely unique to agency culture, which often involves long, demanding hours – the clients say “jump” and people say “how high”. We don’t do that. Clients say “jump” and we say “no, that’s not how it works here”.
We’ve made changes to the way we review work. Pod Leaders now have specific time in their days/weeks to review the work from our more junior team members. This puts less pressure on the Pod Leaders to fit in reviewing around other priorities and means the junior writers have more time dedicated to help them to improve.
We’re continually updating and refining policies to ensure they work for everyone.
It started with my own situation. I had a 2-year-old and a heavily pregnant wife. Sitting in traffic on the daily made me miserable and was seriously affecting my mental health. I’d get to work and have already had enough.
So, I thought I’d ask my employer if I could work from home.
It went like this.
Me: “Can I work from home a few days a week?”
Manager: “No”
Me: “Why not?”
Manager: “Because you learn more in the office”
So, I thought to myself: Screw this!
Life’s too short to be worrying about deadlines, timelines, stressful clients when you just want to be at home to do bathtime or see your kids take their first steps. Why should we not put our personal lives before our working lives? If we build our lives around our friends, families, ambitions and hobbies then we can feel happier and more fulfilled. And in turn this is going to make you work harder, smile more and build a more positive company culture all round. I’ve now built the company I wished existed when I was a writer.
