Happy Employee Appreciation Day to PerkettPR – An Amazing Staff
The first Friday in March marks Employee Appreciation Day and I wanted to be sure to send a small token of appreciation out to my amazing staff. In the PR agency business, it’s not unusual to see a revolving door of employees and I have to say that I am very lucky to never have had this problem. I have a talented staff that is smart, energetic, creative and amazingly loyal to PerkettPR. I’m not quite sure – you’d have to ask them – why I’m lucky enough to have such a good retention rate, but I do know that we just celebrated milestones of 4, 7, and even 10 years with several employees (out of 14 in business to-date).
I always wanted to build an agency that was less political than a typical PR environment, and so we’ve always been pretty choosy about who we hire. We want folks who have entrepreneurial attitudes, but who aren’t going to stick around for just a few years and then take off. We ask employees to leave their egos at the door and put clients and teammates first. We require collaborative work, especially as a virtual environment, and we can’t offer anyone a corner office to show off to their friends and family. And yet, we have a staff that sticks by one another, challenges each other to work better and smarter every day, and that clients continually come back to because not only do the PerkettPR-ers turn out amazing results, but they are fun to work with. I can attest to that. We have such a good camaraderie that it often surprises people. After one six-month long RFP process, in which we were unanimously chosen over 14 other agencies, I was told that one of the reasons we were hired was because “Your team had such an amazing spirit of collaboration that we’ve rarely seen with any agency – let alone a virtual team.” That’s right – you’d never know we’re not in the same “office” every day. We are true teammates and it shows in our results.
I appreciate my staff more than I can ever express – you can’t always get along with everyone but I have to say I’ve been very lucky to have had truly great relationships with 99% of the folks who have worked here. Even in tough times when we’ve had to let people go, they’ve remained friends and professional colleagues and that means the world to me – it shows me that we really do work with those of great character and exceptional spirit.
Hiring folks with such commendable attributes translates to a team that has worked together for years, can ramp up quickly for clients and that many clients have had the luck to work with over their careers, even while moving from company to company over a span of a decade+. It feels great to be able to say, “Yes he/she is still here and we can get them on your account” when a former client comes back to hire us again.
So thank you, PPR team, for being not only amazing PR professionals, but just damn great people to know. I am blessed. And truly grateful.