My role at PortMA is functionally separate from the rest of the team. You’ll notice my colleagues blog about the intersections of experiential marketing with analytical reporting, data collection, project design, and interesting cases they’ve seen. I, on the other hand, work in the day-to-day management of the company: the support functions that allow our employees to deliver on our superior client services. In a departure from the rest of the Experiential Blog, my contributions will examine what keeps a firm like ours running.
Valuing Employees
PortMA places enormous value in its employees. As an analytical consulting company, it is the talent of our staff that distinguish us from similar firms. So, talent maintenance and retention are key, which is why we offer a remote work option, a comprehensive suite of health and disability benefits, a retirement plan with company contribution, a gift matching program, a pro bono work allowance, and unlimited paid time off. We give our employees the flexibility and incentive to build their career around their personal lives. The “work-life balance” paradigm is outmoded at PortMA where we encourage synergy between the two.
Creating Good Will Among Employees
The generosity of our benefits package and work culture is not dissimilar from those of the Googles, Facebooks, Twitters, and other contemporary San Francisco tech start-ups. When I began, this sounded ridiculous and gratuitous to me, too. I have a buddy at Twitter who gushes about their free candy store. There’s another friend who, after work, “goes out” to Facebook. My man, Big Head, over at Hooli has been working on a potato cannon for months! That last one may actually be television; but, it is fundamental that building goodwill among the troops is what maintains and retains talent.
Nurturing Loyalty Among Employees
This works well: Employees develop loyalty and dedication to the corporate mission that manifests itself as increased productivity. I don’t mean to suggest that throwing money towards a benefits package suddenly wins the hearts and minds of all a company’s employees. I know a guy at a similar firm who tells me that, after years of employee dissatisfaction, management implemented an unlimited PTO program like ours. Guess what happened. People stopped showing up to work. It takes careful social engineering to select experiential marketing analysts and managers with the right stuff, develop those relationships, and nurture that human capital.
So, that’s a taste of what I’ll be writing about here. I hope those of you who share my interests come away with lessons from my experience or consider improvements based on what I contribute here. For the rest of you who read the Experiential blog for the real stuff, know that we’re as dedicated behind the scenes as we are with clients face-to-face.