European Agency Awards: Building a great agency culture

For over 20 years, All human has been helping brands to implement their digital strategy. With 60+ employees across Europe and the UK, our extensive industry experience, in-depth knowledge, and understanding of the digital landscape mean we are adept at guiding brands as they expand online and implement an omnichannel business model for today’s consumers. We work with major household brands, including Fáilte Ireland, Ireland’s national tourism development authority, and An Post, Ireland’s national postal service.

Our unique customer-centric approach, emphasising market, and human behaviours, give organisations the digital framework and tactics required to implement a successful omnichannel business model. By creating experiences that people love, we attract and engage users, and through continuous optimisation and identification of revenue opportunities, we secure business alignment and achieve targets and ROI.

The All human team of developers possesses the technical expertise and skillsets to innovate and build content management systems, sites, and applications that leverage the latest market technologies. We invest heavily to ensure our designs meet accessibility compliance and are built on a mobile-first platform.

Why culture matters

We are delighted that in addition to being nominated for Digital Agency of the Year and CRO Agency of the Year in this year’s European Agency awards, we are shortlisted for Best Agency Culture.

One of the cornerstones of a successful agency is the ability to develop and maintain client relationships. Central to this is the talent – the people assigned to create, design, implement and monitor the client’s project. This means that as an employer, we must establish and nurture a working environment that encourages people to stay and be committed to doing their best.

As we’ve grown from an agency of about six to the size we are today, it has become increasingly vital that we take an active role in promoting a work culture that attracts and retains employees.

To facilitate this, we have implemented numerous policies that have contributed to outstanding results in our most recent employee survey.

These include:

Work from home (WFH)

Despite the rise in the number of organisations requiring employees to return to the office, we’ve stuck to our guns and continue to offer employees the option to WFH. This is mainly

due to the overwhelming response from employees to see the policy stay in place. Most see it as giving them more time for personal commitment and responsibilities and a key enabler in securing work/life balance.

L&D programme

One of our most successful employee initiatives is our Learning & Development programme. All employees are eligible to receive a 1000 euro grant that they can use towards their professional development. The monies can be used for a course/s, attending a conference/s, or buying educational materials. In the last 12 months, we’ve had a 70% take-up rate, and from our most recent employee survey, we know that the majority (73%) are satisfied with the level of training & development opportunities provided.

When asked, employees are very enthusiastic about the L&D grant:
“It’s a great privilege to be able to choose any course or conference we want, I never run out of things to learn.”

– Lead UI Designer

“Having the opportunity to utilise the L&D budget to continuously upskill is a very attractive benefit, especially for the stage I’m at in my career.”

– Lead Web Analyst

European Agency Award blog

However, our support of upskilling goes beyond the grant. All human has always supported employee professional growth. Over the years, we’ve worked with employees and encouraged them to pursue career progression actively, even if that means that they leave All human to pursue other opportunities. Many, however, stay and develop and progress within the agency.

Open communication

European Agency Award blog

With a dispersed workforce, transparent and open lines of communication are essential. We conduct regular all-hands meetings where leadership explores organisation issues and concerns and allows everyone to pose questions to senior management.

We produce a monthly newsletter with updates around HR, marketing, CSR, and product-related activities, plus weekly shoutouts that allow each person to share and celebrate a co-worker’s achievement.

We also host regular virtual and in-person activities. From escape rooms to art classes and virtual Grab a Coffee sessions, we try to offer a variety of online activities that help people get to know other employees who they may not work with directly. Again, our main goal is to foster and promote a collaborative and cohesive working environment despite our size and lack of shared location.

We are always looking for new ways to engage employees and have just kicked off a new initiative, Coffee Roulette.

Each month employees will be paired with a different team member and given a two-week window to meet for a virtual or in-person coffee.

Winning Best Agency Culture would demonstrate that it is possible to prioritise your employees, their wellbeing, and their professional development and run a successful agency.