Here at Sketchfolio, we pride ourselves not only on doing amazing work for our clients, but also creating a healthy company culture that values work-life balance. We’ve learned a few things along the way to keep our team happy.
Flexible Schedules
With the huge spectrum of personalities in the world, it’s easy to understand how not everyone works best with a traditional 9-5 schedule. While we start new team members on a traditional schedule, we will often allow them to have some flexibility after a certain period of time. Some people are most efficient bright and early, while others do their best work later in the evening. For certain people, speaking to them before 8 am is risky, unless you are gently handing them their coffee and a delicious gluten heavy pastry. Flexibility in scheduling the team’s working hours can sometimes make a huge difference in someone’s ability to care for their family, spend time with friends, or get errands done.
Work From Home (Telecommuting)
Once team members have settled in, we offer the ability to work from home a couple days a week. Some of our team prefers to be in the office every day, but others who have a longer daily commute to the office appreciate saving some time (and gas money!) by working from home when able. We also have several employees who have moved to other states during their time with us, and working remotely allows us to keep them on our team. This is also another way we can benefit from having team members in different time zones, and provide more availability to our clients. The only downside to telecommuting is not seeing the bull snake that visits the office spontaneously from June to August.
Open Office & Collaborative Tools
Work-life balance isn’t just about schedules, it’s also about keeping your office culture healthy. We have an open office environment, and use lots of collaborative tools and apps to keep the team organized and on the same page. Some of our favorites are Teamwork, Box, Google Drive, and Slack. Using these tools streamlines projects, and helps avoid confusion and roadblocks.
Daily Check Ins
Our team meets every morning for a daily check in meeting. This allows us to quickly and easily address any questions for the day, making the team more productive and efficient. It’s also a great way to keep tabs on open projects, and know the status each day.
Snacks!
Awesome snacks may not be a perk for everyone, but our team LOVES snacking. People who don’t like or need snacks probably should look elsewhere for employment. We keep the fridge and pantry stocked with (mostly) healthy snacks, drinks, and a few tasty treats too. The ability to grab a quick snack or drink from the kitchen means our team can stay focused throughout the day. All the studies show snacking makes people nicer to be around. And when the afternoon zzz’s kick in, we’ll often take a break to play a game of darts. Actual darts, not the Nerf kind
Quarterly Team Days
Each quarter we gather up the team and head out for a day of fun. It’s a great way for us to enjoy time together and work on teamwork skills with a fun activity. Some of our past adventures have included escape rooms, food tours, and Dave & Buster’s. We are always planning the next outing, which can be tricky as not everyone is interested in spending a day at clown school.
Ensuring your company values a good work-life balance can mean the difference between retaining great employees and having a high staff turnover, so it’s definitely something that should be high on the priority list.
