What Agencies Are Doing To Improve Office Culture

Voltage

By Ashley Joseph and Ad Age Studio 30, Published on January 14, 2020

Our founder and Chief Creative Officer, Ryan Kutscher, was featured in Ad Age sharing ways companies are improving culture. Check out his feature below.

“Ryan Kutscher, Founder/CCO, Circus Maximus

At the beginning of the year, a designer said, “I don’t feel creative in this space.” That's hard to hear. And frankly, it pissed me off, which prevented me from hearing what he was really telling me. It took almost the whole year for it to sink in, but what he was saying was that we needed a better office culture, one that provided motivation and let our talent flourish. What I’m most proud of in 2019 is recognizing the need to invest in these needs.

As an agency, our foundational belief was that the final product is the most important determinant of our culture. And while there’s truth to that, it overlooks how important office culture is. By that, I mean the physical space we inhabit, the emotional space we foster and the culture that comes out of that. It’s much more powerful than I had acknowledged. There was a literal awakening: I shot up in bed and said, "We have to move offices!" And that's exactly what we’re doing.

Step one: a new space. We’ve been in a WeWork space for three years. What I liked about WeWork was that it provided a community of startups, a turnkey solution with nice amenities, and easy access to office space and conference rooms while traveling. But what we learned was that it felt like a holding pen, not an actual office. So, we’ve been exploring new spaces and are targeting a February 2020 move-in date. The space will not only provide a better environment for employees but will also include a production facility and dedicated space for our social-listening practice, with live 24/7 culture monitoring. Step two: team-building calendar that includes agency get-togethers, such as group workouts, show-and-tell sessions and visits to cultural events in New York, where time is a finite resource. If anything, we learned that by investing more in our office culture, we get more out of ourselves. And that's the best investment we can make.”