Carrot Creative was the first full-service agency specializing in social media strategy, design and development.
I
sat down with Mike Germano, CEO and Co-Founder, and posed three crucial
questions about belonging:
1. Good brands are bought; great brands are joined. Why do you think your employees join yours?
Carrot Creative spends more time on company culture than on
clients. Our employee avatars, for example, are badges of honor. Unlike
uniforms that suppress individuality, these cartoons actually represent
people’s styles. Also, we broke down every part of our company culture and
assigned an employee to take ownership of it. We have committees for
everything: Welcoming new talent, after hours events, even beer. It’s how we give
face to each component of our organization. That’s why people want to join us.
2. The great workplaces of the world have soul. How do you humanize your culture?
We’re the one company that lists everybody who works for us,
what they do and where to find them on social media. Forget about employees
being stolen. My job isn’t to hide my people – it’s to build an awesome culture
that allows great work to happen. Besides, if people do leave, we have an
alumni committee. We even retire employees’ numbers on the wall. Not because
they used to work here, but because they did something great here. That way,
we’re constantly talking about and connecting to former talent. That
dramatically reduced our turnover rate. We’ve only had one person leave in the
past two years.
3. Belonging is a basic human craving. What do you to remind employees that they’ve found a home?
We’re not a startup. We’re not an agency. We’re a hybrid. Even at the origin of
our organization, we never listened to anybody. We built this company as the
ideal place that we would want to work. And so far, we’ve been right. We
attract top talent, which attracts top clients. The coolest room in our office is
the one with the family tree wall. It has pictures of employee, both current and
past. And it’s a visual reminder that everyone belongs to our family. Especially
in a city where you fight so hard to be cool and hip, this group of nerds wants
you to be yourself. We’ve created a workplace where your craziness and
uniqueness will be embraced.
Thanks Mike!
Meet the Carrot Creative team here.
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