Making Work Work: How Five by Five Is Setting a New Agency Culture

How can agencies best recognise their employees as human beings? Rather than shying away from that question, at Five by Five we’re trying to embrace it.

 

At this point, questions around talent retention have been bubbling away within the industry for a number of years. A lot of that has centred around a disrupted relationship between work and life. Whether it be the ‘great resignation’ or the ‘quiet quit’, we’re still yet to find a new equilibrium between the worlds of the office and the home which makes sense for the modern industry.

While this is an acutely cultural phenomenon, at Five by Five we believe there is a responsibility on the part of the employer to bring something to the table. And whilst we can't remove some of the burdens that come with modern life, we can put things in place that make it easier.

We have proactively looked at what we can do to achieve that, and we’ve also been able to react to what is going on in the world (which, right now, is a lot!). Our independence allows us to be innovative and make those decisions quickly, which in turn makes us more helpful as an employer.

Here are some of the areas we’ve looked to address, and the ideas we’ve implemented to tackle them.

The cost of living crisis, and the cost of borrowing, is extremely scary for many of our team right now. And should any unforeseen costs or issues arise we want to make sure we can help financially, so we’ve introduced Interest-free Life Loans, which can be paid within 48 hours of applying. These loans offer a bit of reassurance for our staff and crucially mean that they don’t have to go seeking an expensive or unfair alternative.

We’ve also moved from salary reviews annually to every quarter, as well as offering regular ‘clinics’ with financial advisers to provide useful tips on how everyone can make their money go further. 

In my time at Five by Five (7.5 years) we’ve not once declined a flexible working request, including pre-covid. And whilst we’ve expanded flexibility across the board for everyone, we knew we could do more. We were seeing some of our teams wanting to spend time with friends or family who were in different parts of the country, or even the world, but taking time off was inefficient for them. We were also seeing some people wanting to travel and visit another country, just to experience a different culture. Not to mention parents who need to relocate during the lengthy school holidays.

So we have introduced a Work From Anywhere policy. This has inspired greater creativity, made people happier because they are with those they love and it’s not impacted the work - in fact, it’s often improved it. 

We believe that it doesn’t matter how you come into parenthood. We wanted to ensure the narrative moved from women having babies to parents having children. That’s why in 2022 we launched a new Shared Parental Leave, where any parent is entitled to 26 weeks of leave (13 of which will be on full pay, and another 13 on half-pay). For fathers, non-birth parents, or secondary adopters that boils down to an additional 24 weeks when compared to what is currently offered as standard by the UK government.

In a sense, these policies are a result of that aforementioned industry-wide conversation around retention. In order to get the very best people, you need to give them the very best.

 

But it also goes deeper than that. We’re witnessing a distinct change in the dynamic between work and life, perhaps accelerated by the pandemic but not caused by it. What we’re looking at with these policies and beyond is the distillation of where these changes have been headed towards. It’s a new working culture where your job can mean more, and provide more, beyond your allotted working hours.

Given the speed of change, we are continually reviewing these policies to ensure they remain relevant and fit for purpose. On top of that, we’re open to new ideas and benefits which can come from anywhere - including our employee-led networks. 

 

Ultimately, we’re building a culture of work which enables our lives to thrive around it. In turn, that will lead to more job satisfaction and a feeling that the work we’re doing is helping us to grow. And the benefits won’t simply be internal - as our MD Annabel Mackie puts it, “if we get our culture right our clients will benefit, too, enjoying a higher quality of work produced by a team at Five by Five UK which is happy and motivated”. In this time of seemingly constant disruption and uncertainty, that’s something worth aiming for.