Does Element Three pay their employees well?

According to anonymously submitted Glassdoor reviews, Element Three employees rate their compensation and benefits as 4.1 out of 5. Find out more about salaries and benefits at Element Three. This rating has been stable over the past 12 months.

How satisfied are employees working at Element Three?

82% of Element Three employees would recommend working there to a friend based on Glassdoor reviews . Employees also rated Element Three 4.0 out of 5 for work life balance, 4.5 for culture and values and 4.2 for career opportunities.

What are the top reviewed jobs at Element Three?

Digital Marketing Associate (2)

What are the pros of working at Element Three according to real employee reviews?

"The leadership team is incredibly transparent of how the company is doing financially which brought me peace of mind." ((in 5 reviews)); "Culture is amazing." ((in 3 reviews)); "Leadership is accessible and available if you take advantage of the opportunity to get to know them." ((in 3 reviews))

Skip to content Skip to footer

Notifications

Element Three

Element Three Reviews

4.3

82% would recommend to a friend

(29 total reviews)

Tiffany Sauder and Kyler Mason

89% approve of CEO

81% positive business outlook

Ratings by category

4.5

Culture and values

4.3

Senior management

4.2

Career opportunities

4.1

Compensation and benefits

4.0

Work/Life balance

3.3

Diversity and inclusion

Element Three has an employee rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars, based on 29 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Element Three employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Media and communication industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

29 reviews

1.0

8 May 2019

Its all for show

Technology

Recommend

CEO approval

Business outlook

Pros

snacks, cool office, occasionally a genuine person.

Cons

be honest with your team and listen to the people you hire. Lying about terminating employees and saying they "resigned" is a quick way to lose ALL trust from employees. Everyone is leaving because its a unorganized mess, they cant keep talent due to both them leaving or firing the people who actually do the work.

Element Three Response

Dear Former employee in technology, As you must know, as a former employee, feedback is something we are consistently gathering, synthesizing and responding to, particularly when it is productive, honest and constructive. I struggle a little bit with the tone of your review but in the spirit of being grateful for the transparency that we foster here, I would like to respond in the best way that I can. First of all, I am happy to see that you were able to find a few things that were positive. It is disappointing that you only encountered an occasional genuine person, as that is one of the key criteria in the 'permission to play" values to work here. In my 30 years of hiring people, I cannot remember a time when I intentionally hired someone who lacked that quality and if someone slipped through the cracks, it was quickly remedied. That said, sometimes people are so good at their actual jobs that we initially miss the fact that they are not good people - but eventually, truth shows itself. Which brings me to your point about "everyone" leaving. As the VP of Talent, I would be the first to be informed if everyone was leaving and as of yet, I have not seen that trend. I am wondering if you are reviewing the right company? I would like to address your comment about "lying" about terminated employees. My job at Element Three is very important to me because I am responsible for the safety, happiness, and success of every single person here. That is ALL I think about from the minute I walk through the door. I sit out in the open so people can approach me, talk to me, ask me for help and so I can see their smiling faces. When the time comes for a person to leave Element Three, it is a private interaction between me and that individual and the ONLY thing I care about is their privacy, their dignity and their peace of mind. Never, ever, ever will I violate the dignity of an individual for whom I am responsible in this company. I have been sitting at my desk all day today trying to understand your description of us as a "gossipy, political crap show" of a culture and I remain completely confused on this one. That said, one of the exercises we recently went through over the past 18 months was to provide more clarity around our Core Values, and we made a pledge to get better at ensuring the people in our company align fully to our values. Maybe you sat next to someone who didn’t align completely? If so, I do apologize for that, no one deserves to be made uncomfortable in their own workplace by a toxic co-worker. Best wishes to you. I know you will end up where you can be most productive and happy. I am sorry it was not here. Karen Seketa VP of Talent Element Three

2.0

22 June 2015

All over the board...

Anonymous employee

Recommend

CEO approval

Business outlook

Pros

There is a healthy Creative environment, with a young staff. A Good salary if you negotiate it from the beginning.

Cons

They don't know what they want to do with their company, the management direction and who they want to focus on being. There is no onboard training or direction/description for roles within the company. They can be quick to judge and you are left to guess what it is they want out of you.

1.0

29 May 2019

A Dream Job Full of False Promises, No Upward Growth, and Poor Leadership

Anonymous employee

Recommend

CEO approval

Business outlook

Pros

Having been at the company when it was around 20 employees it was truly special to be a part of something that grew so fast. The motivation many of the creatives I worked with at the time was infectious though the hard work and years there were all for nothing in the end and were shown little to no appreciation when it came down to making the tough decision to let people go in financial hardships. My view of this company has nothing to do with the business decision to let people go in a tough time but rather in the way in which they did it. I don't believe these benefits stated in other reviews actually tell a fitting story within the realm of such a negative outcome when the company saw failure. As I mention, check the mid 2017 E3 reviews against the 2018/2019 reviews. The company has changed, and not for the better. Considering the way in which the the executive team treated employees during such a financial downfall with the loss of a large client. They planned poorly and reacted even worse. It felt irresponsible, unprofessional, and incredible demoralizing as a person sincerely looking for a place to belong and willing to do anything to create what they were saying they wanted to build. In all reality, it was all a false promise and a loss in human trust for me personally. It’s difficult for me to feel as part of a team when there is whispers in back rooms and things that rise up from the ashes after you’re done and gone. I’m sorry, there are no pros here. That is not what this review is going to be and I don’t want to support or direct anyone to this company after the way this company, and their executive team reacted to such a harsh time in many of those key employees lives at their exits in recent years.

Cons

My biggest problem with E3 has to be with the way in which they treated their longest standing employees from the early years of growth in the hard times that came in mid 2018. You would think that loyalty and trust would be big factors in building a great company, not at E3. Though I don’t blame any company to have to make tough decisions when faced with financial issues but it was the way in which they did it. It felt cold, heartless, and overall just poorly communicated across the board. Having been told by my directors you are fine and keep doing great work while the decision was made up to a month prior to the final meeting at the company. Not to mention to have been built up as such a great asset with a growing review each and every year paired with then being tossed aside without any true reason or support when let go outside of you can call this random agency that helps you with your resume. It’s a small creative community and word of mouth speaks further than throwing me to a third party company who knows nothing about this city and my situation and skills as E3 did already. “Take ownership. Then celebrate as a team. The work and the team come first. Be willing to jump in or out as needed.” This quote stands out to me as something I find to be the biggest lie from the overall company and their mission statement. Once you really dig into the companies true issues you find that these words are completely false in practice. Overall the company has much to learn from the happenings of 2018 that primarily included the loss of a large client. I think one of my concerns with the company is the way they built the company up and propped up structure around friends, family members, and past co-workers from other agencies by the higher level executives. Though this can work to build relationships fast it was a downside to those at the lower levels that had been there a long time as they were hoping to grow upward as promised. They essentially told you one thing and how to grow within a role while building multiple levels above you without warning or any type of overview. Many of these roles were filled with what many saw as unnecessary or confusing positions.

Element Three Response

Dear Former Creative employee, You clearly took a lot of time to provide this feedback so I can see it is very important to you. Thank you for that. You are right, we really had a tough go of it last year in managing the loss of a client that, in any other company, would have resulted in the release of at least 25% of their workforce. That was the hardest era I can remember in my 8 years of working at Element Three. Our team spent days upon days doing research to learn from other companies who experienced this same situation to understand how they handled it and learn from their successes and their failures. So yes, you are right, there were a LOT of very important conversations going on that are misrepresented in your review as "whispers in back rooms". Our leadership team, and in particular our President, agonized over this situation and in the end she decided NOT to release 25% of our staff. Rather, she took the financial hit and the risk to fix it. The company rallied and we worked together as a team to protect our own by closing the gap and we came pretty close. What we did learn from this experience was that we could not fix it all fast enough to eliminate the need to release 5 people (vs 17) and that decision was not made with whispers in back rooms, I assure you. They were made by the collective department leadership based on input and feedback in many, many aspects of the work. None of these decisions were made easily or with any aspect of enjoyment or malicious intent. But they were all the right decisions and we stand by that and we came out of that experience a better, stronger company with confidence that we handled it in the very best way we could. As you know from your own experience, every person impacted was provided with generous severance, fully paid outplacement support and as much grace as we could muster in a difficult situation. You did have many good years at the company with tremendous freedom, flexibility, and support to not only work on exciting clients but also to work on your own personal brand and your own bold story. That is definitely not something you get anywhere else, at least not to the extent that we offered that to you and to others here. It makes me sad that in exchange for several years of enjoying all of the things that we work so hard every day to offer to our employees, you are left with these words to share. I know personally that your time here was very, very positive - I am truly sorry that it did not end in the way you wanted it to. You will definitely have a bright future, particularly with the strong personal brand you have built for yourself and we are proud to be part of the encouragement provided for you to be able to do some of that here. Karen Seketa VP of Talent Element Three

Viewing 1 - 3 of 29 Reviews