Letting Artistic Passions Lead: How Hornet Reimagined Employee Wellbeing

Staff retention is such an important aspect to any business and the fast-paced advertising industry is no exception. As a design and animation production company within that sphere, Hornet has an especially difficult but worthy challenge of finding ways to keep our artists thriving and their creative wells brimming. Yet it’s not only our staff designers or animators who are artists – it’s everyone. It’s our producers, our tech teams, and our studio coordinators, just to name a few. We’re all inspired and do our best work when we’ve had time to stop, and create. So we developed a new benefit for all staff, one where they get five-days paid time off (in addition to their vacation benefits) to work on a personal creative project where they can explore their craft and recharge. We call it Hornet’s Creative Development Benefit – or 'CDB' (not to be confused with CBD!), and its success has been simply remarkable. Employee feedback and their resulting post-hoc work all confirm, CDB not only replenishes their creative stores, but grows their skills while helping prevent burnout. 

It all started a few years ago. We were in talks to bring on our current director of production Karen Lawler as head of production. For years, Karen chose freelancing over a staff role: “It was about more than just the freedom freelancing gives you. I was looking for a home, and not just any home – but one where artists could thrive.” Recognising the same ethos at Hornet, Karen suggested we create what would eventually become CDB, something she’d already structured into her own personal style of working as a freelancer . “I’d set aside a chunk of time each year to work on something personally meaningful. I always came back so refreshed and reenergised, and that’s something I wanted for our staff.” So when Karen joined, we got to work – and rolled out the benefit to our employees in September of 2021. 

As we explained to our staff, the rules are simple: Each employee presents a proposal to our CDB Leads that outlines how they plan to spend their week; the proposal can be for just about anything as long as it’s artistic in some way, it does not have to be work related (though of course it could be); and once the five days are over, the employee regroups with the Leads to go over what they accomplished and any learnings. As an added benefit, Hornet reimburses the employee up to a certain amount if their proposal has associated costs, with a good example being art classes. And their excitement was palpable.

Here’s a sampling of what some of our staff has to say about their experiences with the program:

“I had been developing a feature but kept running into a wall at about 30 pages or so. I used my first CDB with the goal of breaking through it to write the first draft. It was truly a gift – I figured out my writing process and finished the draft that week and I just used this year’s CDB to finish the 5th one. Knowing my writing process has been invaluable to my role here as well. I can’t recommend it enough!” – Theresa Peterson, creative development associate producer

“For my Creative Development Benefit days, I spent a week 3D modelling a character for a film that I have been working on. It gave me the proper time I needed to reach this major milestone and was also a great learning experience for improving my character modelling skills in general. It was also a good morale boost to get to work on a project that was fully my own for a week!” – Matt Corsillo, 2D animator/CG generalist

“I used my CDB week to finish pre-production on my short film and do a much needed motion test. I had been chipping away on nights and weekends, but nothing compares with an entire week of uninterrupted focus time, especially when finishing the designs and cementing the visual language for a project. As someone who doesn’t work as an artist ‘on the box’ in my day to day, it was restorative and momentum building to have those 5 days to pour myself into my work. I’m convinced my final film was all the better for it!” – Dez Stavracos, head of production

“Being offered the time to slow down, take a step back from the marathon of production and have a whole week to treat a personal project with the same respect as a job has been beyond inspiring. I was able to explore a new visual language that I've had in mind for months – that's so valuable.” – Natalie Labarre, director and 2D creative director

Recognising the value of CDB, we wanted to keep the offers coming. We recently rolled out a 401K matching program, added extensive health benefits that include out-of-network coverage, and invested in Hornet’s workspace with a new, 15K-square foot loft in SoHo. Replete with areas for head-down work, collaborative huddle spaces, and even bleacher-style seating for when we host guest speakers, we designed the new office so our employees could learn, grow and build relationships with their co-workers – which we all know can lead to lifelong friendships (or maybe even something more)! After 23 years in the business, we couldn’t be more excited about what the future holds for Hornet and our staff.