The Belonging Sessions 009: Shirley Au from Huge

Huge is a full-service digital agency that transforms brands and grows businesses.

I sat down with president Shirley Au and posed three crucial questions on
belonging:

1. Good brands are bought, but great brands are joined. Why do you think your employees join yours?

We
try really hard to have a flat organization. We don’t tolerate big egos in the
workplace. For a lot of people, it’s attractive that the company is a
meritocracy and employees are evaluated based on their smarts and hard work. At Huge, we do amazing work and build
great products and experiences that people use all the time. If you look across
our body of work, it’s clear that we have a point of view. We tirelessly
analyze how users think and try to understand what they want to achieve when
they interact with a brand—whether it’s setting up their wedding registry or doing
something positive for their local community.

2.     The great workplaces of the world have soul. How do you
humanize your culture?

What’s
interesting about Huge is that there aren’t rigid job descriptions or career
trajectories, especially because the digital space continues to evolve so quickly.
We’re very flexible in terms of allowing employees to move into different roles
and disciplines, if they demonstrate talent and interest in a different area of
the company. We aren’t strict about hierarchies or making people follow
specific paths.

We
also try to create a relaxed-yet-professional office culture. We want people to
feel like they’re in a comfortable environment while they work. Employees can
bring their dogs to the office, we provide free snacks and beer daily, we have indoor
bike racks to accommodate employees who cycle to work and we celebrate
everyone’s “Huge birthday”—the annual anniversaries of their start dates—with
cards and treats.

Each
office and department also tends to have its own organic subculture, which we
try very hard to support without it feeling contrived. Our Huge Social program
sponsors activities based on employee requests, such as company-wide kickball,
soccer and bowling teams.

3.    
Belonging is a basic
human craving. What do you do to remind employees that they’ve found a
home?  

In
general, we have a very high retention rate. Many employees have left to work
at other companies and actually end up returning to Huge. We give our project
teams a lot of latitude and freedom to learn, create and grow along with their
teammates. We give them the toolset and framework, and it’s up to them to
figure out the best solution for the client, without micromanaging.

People
come to Huge to work with the best people in the industry and to work really
hard on things they care about. For most of our employees, when they find their
workplace full of like-minded people with shared values, shared priorities and shared
talent, that’s when it really feels like home. We work very hard to strip away
the distractions so that people can focus on what they’re really here for—to
make something they love and would use themselves. 

Thanks Shirley! Learn more about Huge here.