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Thank you for taking the time to review our company. As the CEO of GNGF I am concerned that there may be some information that you felt was true for you at the time but is either not actually the case now or may have been just misunderstood.
I'd like to go through each response and see if I can provide some insights.
1. Our company consists of people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. Like many healthy agencies, there are more people in their 20s than 30s and more in their 30s than 40s. As our agency has grown so has our ability to hire more experienced people. Our experience levels are certainly not hindering our execution as we are considered a leader in our industry.
2. We value and certainly do not discriminate hiring for any reasons. I personally value diversity and also believe that diversity is not just ethnic backgrounds, rather that is socio-economic backgrounds, gender, sexual orientation, etc. We do not use any differentiator in hiring. Over the years we've seen both employees and interns from a wide variety of backgrounds come through our doors. We are also proud that our company is half female and male with more females in leadership roles than their counterparts.
3. Pay certainly includes more than money and that can sometimes make it challenging to measure. Our pay, based on a study by hiring agencies is on-par with other regional marketing agencies. We also have incentive pay based on specific measurable key metrics that bring us above the norm. Adding in our benefits — such as 100% paid-by-employer medical benefits, 401k match, work from home once a week, unlimited vacation days, and more — and we believe that our total compensation and flexible work environment exceeds any other similar regional firms.
4. Unfortunately, I am not sure what this former employee is basing their information on. To provide the best value and execution for our clients, we made a very tough, very transparent, and significant strategic change to adjust staff based on our core strengths of online marketing strategy, branding, and design. We did cut some staff that didn’t fit into those core strengths during this time. Also during the renewed focus we had some months in the red so as not to disrupt any service to our clients. But there is no disputing that we have been a profitable company over the past 6 years. Everyone knows an unprofitable small business cannot survive. We have also not lost a large amount of clients. When comparing our renewal rates with our peer agencies, we are proud to be doing very well.
5. We are passionate about our company culture and do our best to hire according to our core values. Unfortunately, we aren’t perfect at this and some people are hired that do not act in accordance those values. This usually becomes apparent quickly and some even self-select out before other action is required.
6. Transparency is a core value at GNGF. At no other company have I ever seen such an effective team focus on ‘knowing how you are doing’ and ‘knowing where you are going’. We are committed to being a best place to work, and a survey in 2015 showed that there was some concern in this area. Out of that we now have daily morning meetings with the whole team, a weekly company meeting focused on discussing issues, weekly one-on-one meetings with your direct manager, with praise and areas of improvements documented for each employee's reference, and quarterly reviews. The purpose is that you should always know where you stand at GNGF. However, thank you for the feedback and I will look to see if there is something we can do to communicate more effectively. We also have seen that some people don’t like this process of transparency as it quickly sheds a light on those who are underperforming. We do not wish to be anything less than open and transparent with each other and our team.
7. We are a small company. The CEO (me) does not hide in a glass tower office. I sit in the same open office environment as everyone else. In fact, as I am writing this, I sit across from an intern who has no problem asking me questions throughout the day. In order to maintain in touch with how everyone is feeling in the organization I have one-on-one meetings every other month with every employee. We also have a weekly meeting where 1.5 hours is spent discussing any issue, voted on by the entire team, so we can fix any issues as fast as possible. That does not mean that we have a dozen executives for people to reach out to. Some people like mega-companies with layers and layers and that is ok. We are small company and that means everyone chimes in.
I hope this helps with some of these questions. As I mentioned, thank you for taking the time to comment here. We work hard to be a good, dare I say 'best' place to work, and invite anyone to set up a time for a site visit. Sometimes it just takes stepping into an office to get a feel for the culture and environment.
