AdAge recently partnered with Best Companies Group to identify the 50 best marketing, media, and advertising workplaces. The list can be found on the AdAge website here. This got us here at the Loft thinking about what people are looking for out of the best marketing agency workplace.
Taking a peek at the Best Companies Group website, they appear to be a company with roots in surveying employees. While the AdAge article linked above does not mention “how” they created the list, we’ll make the assumption for this blog post that they surveyed a bunch of agency talent, and aggregated that data back to determine which agencies offered the best perks and the talent noted being the most satisfied. For the top agencies, it looks like they performed a more qualitative interview – which results in some long-form write-ups.
The agency setting is an interesting one, in that it’s typically built around the quality of their talent. As such, attracting the best creative and technical talent is a HUGE part of an agencies success. This breeds a unique work-place atmosphere that won’t be found in your typical corporate America office. Reviewing the AdAge Top 50 Employers list, we dissected the perks that are offered by the top 3 winners on the list. Some are pretty typical (i.e., dogs roaming around), and some are downright awesome (i.e., 4-day work weeks, annual trips, and more).
Here is the list:
- Annual all-expense paid trips for all employees
- Quarterly happy hours
- Pets roaming free in the office
- Stipends for education and well-being
- Adoption assistance
- Paternity leave and maternity leave
- $250 gift card passed out to new parents for diapers
- Gym memberships
- Unlimited paid time off after 1 year of employment
- In-house massage (from time-to-time)
- Team building activities like zip lining, egg hunts, trivia games, and dance parties
- Option to work 4 days per week at 85% pay with full benefits
- Summer Fridays off and early-off Fridays the rest of the year
- 100% paid health insurance deductibles
- In-office video games
- Paid weekly fitness classes
So do these perks lead to employee satisfaction? Would they make your life better? Should other agencies think about adding some of them to their agency DNA? All good questions. From my POV, they certainly help!