Navigating Culture Building in a Remote Agency Environment with Jane Crisan | Ep #668

What kind of culture do you promote at your agency? Do you keep track of things employees say are hitting or not hitting the mark about the culture? How has your culture changed since the pandemic? Today’s guest runs a 260-employee agency and has put great care to ensure that work flexibility and employee happiness are a big part of their culture. She believes giving employees reasons to stay at her agency are much more beneficial than the work of having to constantly replace key roles due to high turnout rates. Tune in to learn about the ways she has reintroduced in-person activities while keeping a mostly remote workflow and how she makes sure employees feel heard.

Jane Crisan is the CEO of Rain the Growth Agency, a fully integrated performance-based agency based in Portland, Oregon. Her agency offers agency a unique approach to scaling brands with deep expertise in media, creative, strategy, and analytics. With more than half of their employees working from all over the country, they’ve made a commitment to having a flexible-first workforce as a way to keep employees happy. Tune in to see their journey to small independent business to a multimillion-dollar agency and the struggles to maintain a flexible work culture following the pandemic.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• Mapping out the path for employee career progression.

• Building community while respecting work flexibility.

• Making a deliberate effort to create culture.

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Making Sure Employees Feel Heard & Can Express Their Concerns

Like many businesses, Jane’s agency took the pandemic as a chance to open up its doors to talent from all over the country. It was a great opportunity to grow the agency, which started 25 years ago as a small independent agency and now has around 260 employees.

Getting access to talent they probably would’ve never been able to relocate to Portland was a huge advantage and it also meant committing to being a flexible-first agency. Jane puts a lot of effort into maintaining low turnover levels, and although she knows there’s no magic solution to making everyone happy, there are a few things she’s found are very important to creating a sound work environment. For starters, the agency conducts a yearly all-employee survey to gather feedback and identify areas of improvement. This survey has been conducted for the past 10 years and allows the agency to track trends and address any concerns.

The Importance of Mapping Out the Path

Over the years, the number one thing that came across with the annual survey was career progression. To address this, the agency invests time and resources in helping employees see a future within the organization. They employ a talent management assessment system called the "nine box," which assesses an employee's potential for growth and where they currently stand in their career. This system allows them to identify high performers, future leaders, and individuals who may need additional support or training.

The agency is also very committed to quarterly goal setting and tracks whether departments and individuals are setting and achieving their goals. For Jane, no matter the size of the agency, goal setting a priority and holding employees accountable helps creates a culture of continuous improvement and personal development.

Having a clear growth track can help tremendously to keep people motivated. Instead of shifting people's goals every quarter, at Jane’s agency the senior team sits down at the beginning of the year and establish career progression goals for each employee. This long-term approach allows employees to have a clear vision of their growth trajectory and helps them stay focused on their objectives throughout the year.

Additionally, the agency conducts quarterly check-ins to ensure that employees and their managers are on the same page and to make any necessary adjustments. Sometimes employees may find that their initial goal to be managers didn’t turn out to be what they expected and want to change paths. Many individuals excel as individual contributors and may feel miserable when forced into management positions. This is why it’s so important to help employees discern their strengths and interests, guiding them towards the most suitable career paths.

Mastering the Remote Agency Balancing Act

As a mostly distributed agency, Jane confronts an ironic challenge - remotely fostering the connections that sustain a thriving culture. Granting location flexibility wins employee applause yet strains community ties essential for engagement.

Seeking solutions – and since employees themselves expressed missing in-person interactions – Jane orchestrates annual on-site summits converging far-flung teams under one roof. Finally pairing names to faces, coworkers bond face-to-face, forging ties persisting long after their Portland return.

Supplementing yearly reunions, virtual initiatives facilitate camaraderie despite distance. Happy hours, trivia and Slack channels give employees seeking camaraderie space to interact casually. Laughter and levity still permeate daily experience.

While remote work poses undeniable engagement obstacles, for Jane flexibility prevails as a strategic advantage with proper caretaking. Her creative efforts to nurture connection amidst constraints highlight that distributed teams can thrive through unity-focused systems.

With purposeful community-building as a priority, employees feel recognized, valued and bonded through shared experience - the foundation for an agile, resilient agency built to go the distance. Though staying remote requires constant creativity, with the right workplace culture any isolated gaps soon disappear.

Cultivating Connective Tissue Through Deliberate Building

Jane understands a thriving agency relies on thriving teams. And cohesive teams demand deliberate culture cultivation. Hence the urgency of making connection central to company identity - binding individuals to collaborative community. Deliberate culture builds strong teams, so her focus is on creating and maintaining a set of values, behaviors, and practices that align with the company's goals and objectives. When a company takes intentional steps to cultivate a positive and inclusive culture, it lays the foundation for building strong teams.

For Jane, one of the key aspects of deliberate culture is the emphasis on connection and community. She prioritizes regular team meetings, both in-person and virtually, where team members have the opportunity to interact and collaborate. By fostering these connections, team members feel a sense of belonging and are more likely to stay with the company for a longer period.

Over time, the priority placed on genuine human relationships cements loyalty even amidst competing opportunities. When agency priorities align with employee values beyond paychecks, retention risk reduces.

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