[00:00:00] Stephen: Okay. Today's Wow at Work podcast is with Luke Kyte. He's the head of culture at Reddico. Reddico are a digital marketing agency. They're based in, in Kent, in Tumbridge. And we talk about many things Today. We talk about how Reddico have navigated a pandemic with their employees, the policies they've put in place around that, the policies that they have based around unlimited holidays. We talk about B Corp accreditation and what that means to the organization. We talk about democracy at work and also. Reddico very good at leading with transparency and trust without having leaders. The joys of working remotely wherever you live once the work is done. So what's not to like? So let's dive into the Wow at Work with Luke Kite from Reddico.

[00:00:40] Stephen: I'm thinking of. I suppose the, uh, the last number of years with a digital market agency, what has that felt like? You know, like the last time we met up was at a Happy Workplace Conference, Ireland in 2020, and, uh, how's the last three years been for Reddico?

[00:00:56] Luke: Well, it's been, it's been tricky as you can imagine. Obviously, everything that's been going on in the world. Um, we were fortunate enough to, I suppose, be able to ride through sort of the covid years. Obviously we're still in, in some kind of pandemic as as we stand, but we managed to get through those kind of, those main years relatively unscathed.

[00:01:13] Luke: We did have sort of clients pausing and, and canceling every now and then, depending on the industry they were in. So we were hit a little bit. But fortunately not as much as a lot of other industries have been, a lot of companies sort of around the world. So we managed to get through that relatively unscathed and really did lean very much heavily on our values and kind of the business we had built in the previous, sort of three or four years to really help guide the decisions and, and the way that we wanted to approach a real issue like Covid and try and get through that with the team. Um, or it'll be in one good place.

[00:01:42] Stephen: Here's a quick question. Why would a digital marketing agency be interested in workplace Happiness? Or why, why is it something that you delved into and saw it was as important for your employees?

[00:01:51] Luke: Yeah, so this, this story sort of started back in 20 17, 20 18. So we've been going through this for about five years now. And the business was founded in 2012 on the back of trying to create a fun, happy place to work where people would enjoy. Coming into the office. And a lot of that meant table tennis tables and beer fridges and nights out and events and activities. Thinking at the time that culture was built on how much money we'll be giving people and kinda spending on, on having a good time.

[00:02:19] Luke: And then when we started getting sort of team ENPS scores through, so the Nhat promoter score from the team and our score sort of survey was coming back not as high as we expect or anticipated it to be. And that left us with these questions of, okay, well are people taking it for granted? Are people kind of, uh, just thinking that this is standard across any agency, that this is how they'll be treated? And then it kind of left us thinking, well actually, is there something that we are doing? Are we not being strong enough from like a cultural perspective? Are we not creating the right framework, the right business for people to thrive in?

[00:02:50] Luke: And so it was in 20 17, 20 18 that we really started to seek out alternative ways of working and really looking at other businesses that were doing these really great progressive things and trying to learn from these about how we could really change Reddico as a business. And I use the analogy of a house quite a lot when it comes to this, but essentially if you look at a, a lovely house on the road with a nice picket fence out the front, and it's sort of beautifully sort of carved, if the foundations of that house aren't well built and aren't structurally sound, that house will eventually come calming down. And I see culture now as the foundations of that house.

[00:03:25] Luke: So for any business, the foundations are built on the culture, the framework, how we expect people to come to work. And ultimately, no matter how pretty the house is, how nice the house looks, without the right culture, without the right foundations in place, everything will come crumbling down. And at that point in 20 17, 20 18, we're at the point where we needed to strengthen those foundations and really kind of build up again from the bottom up. Or we could just continue what we were doing and build a bigger, bigger, bigger house, and eventually there would be cracks and things would show through and and would all go wrong.

[00:03:55] Luke: So that's where we were at at that point. And for us, it's really important to listen to the team, listen to the feedback we're getting at the time, and start looking at alternative ways that we could potentially work.

[00:04:05] Luke: So in terms of how we then set about making things different was, okay, well how can we go down this self-managed, self sort of way of working, this, this kind of self organizing principles. And a lot of that is built around sort of freedom and trust and responsibility. And essentially in 2018, we created this manifesto where we identified six core areas that we wanted to change the shape of the business. And obviously, I won't have time to go into all of those in detail, but those sort of six areas form that initial manifesto, a lot of it was built on this idea of having complete freedom, complete trust, complete responsibility, and what people are doing in the day to day, and giving people the freedom to choose when they work, how they work, setting their own goals, having things like unlimited holiday, removing managers complete from the system. So rather than creating a powerful boss or a powerful leader within the team, actually this idea of creating a powerful team that comes together and distributes responsibilities and shares responsibilities and tackles problems together.

[00:04:58] Luke: And over the course of the sort of subsequent, sort of three or four years after the manifesto continue to, Build on these practice and these principles to try and I evolve into this idea of this self-managing sort of team, um, and really, I suppose ultimately, just give people complete freedom and responsibility in how they want to be at work and how they're gonna achieve their best results, and focus on the output rather than the input which is what a lot of businesses do. 

[00:05:22] Stephen: Is there any particular role model or company or organization that you saw you said, wow, this seems to be working very well, let's model what they do?

[00:05:28] Luke: I suppose not a particular company that stands out. More than it was. Um, various resources and books and different leaders that we spoke to and asked questions of. And, and so some of the ones that stand out, you've got, um, sort of reinventing organizations by Frederic Laloux. You've got, um, the Happy Manifesto by Henry Stewart. You've got obviously the corporate Rebholz nowadays who, who go out and speak to business leaders and companies all over the world about the different radical ways that they work. You've got like, Hire in China, you had sort of Morningstar in, in North America, so all of these different types of businesses from a range of different industries just working in a different way. And at the time it was a case of, oh, a Maverick obviously is the big one from South America. Um, sort of kind of similar. And looking at these kind of ideas and thinking, well actually, if it works for these, like why can't it work for us?

[00:06:14] Luke: So we didn't necessarily take sort of the blueprint of one company and rolled out Reddico, but we almost took the bits that we liked from all of these different companies and created our own version of that. Um, because I think ultimately, If you try to just to emulate and completely copy another organization, it probably won't work because your company's gonna be very different. Like the, the culture you're trying to build, the people you've got, the service you offer, whatever that might be, it's all gonna be very different, um, to, to the next company along the road. So for us, it was a case, well, what's gonna work for us? How can we adapt this? How can we take the ideas behind some of this and evolve it and build it at Reddico as something that works for us and is is more unique to how we wanna build sort of a great company for the future.

[00:06:55] Stephen: Yeah, I like that. And then you gain ownership over that rather than just be given a template to be told to the employees, this is what we're gonna do, thesis. Yeah. I like all those reference points. That for me, and I always say, this was Maverick by Ricardo Semler. When I was reading that, when I was studying management years ago, I couldn't believe there was a guy that was doing something as off the wall as what he was doing. And, and he was doing it in production. Like he was doing it on a, a production plant with unionized members with a very old culture. And I couldn't believe that he had sort of turned it completely on its head, which is what I loved about that book and to this day that, that, that book is the one reference point that I always got back to. That just changed absolutely everything for me.

[00:07:30] Stephen: So when you talk about a couple of different, uh, things that radical do brilliantly, um, when, when you talk about unlimited holidays, now I've heard of this happening within sort of organizations like Netflix talk about it. How does that work? Is or is that feels, I always think that sometimes it can feel like, uh, to me with an organization, would that feel like a stressful sort of, not a rule, but, but something that's in place where people feel, well, I can't take too much, I can't take too little. I'm not quite sure what I should take. Should I take three weeks, two weeks, or whatever? What way does it work with Reddico?

[00:07:59] Luke: Yeah, and that's a really good point, and this is something that I see a lot, particularly on LinkedIn or Twitter. People say. Oh, unlimited holiday doesn't work for this or it doesn't work for this and, and it didn't work for us for XY reason. And for me it always comes back to the implementation of a particular policy or way of working in, in terms of how that's managed.

[00:08:18] Luke: A lot of the time I see unlimited holiday used as almost like a PR done. It's very much a look at us. We've got this shiny new benefit that's very different to normal, like we're amazing, like for the team, they've just got, take as much holiday as they wanna and there's no consequence and all that type of thing. And it's almost like a standalone policy that's kind of just rolled out on a whim. They see it and they think, oh, that looks amazing. Let's do that. Everyone would love to come into our company. It's a great retention thing, a great way of hiring or recruitment, whatever that might be. And for me, then the implementation goes wrong because it's not part of this bigger strategy around health and wellbeing. And so for us, at the time when it came to unlimited holiday, it was part of a, a much bigger piece around sort of, um, health and wellbeing and flexibility where we said to people, Going forward, you're gonna be able to choose the times you work throughout the day.

[00:09:06] Luke: And obviously with, with Covid and, and everything that happened over the last few, few years, remote working, a lot of this was fast tracked and a lot more business are doing this, but for us at the time, it was still quite unique and still quite new and fresh and, and raw. We're saying to people that there's no set hours in the day or the week, you come to work when you want to and you know you're gonna be most productive. So whether that's nine in the morning, whether that's midday, whether you need to take a break at lunchtime, cause you get a, I dunno, get up in a coma after a big lunch, whatever that might be. Actually, you're bit of a night hour. You love working at 6, 7, 8, night, whatever you need to do, you do that and, and you get the results that you need to in, in the right way for you.

[00:09:42] Luke: We, so we had that, we had, um, people saying, We'll work remotely. You can work in the office, you can work wherever you want to. So there's no kind of limit to having to, to come into the office. And then again, another part of that was a limit to holiday and saying, you now get to choose how many, how many days you're gonna take off throughout the year. And for everyone that's gonna be different.

[00:09:59] Luke: So a good example of this is when we first rolled out in the first year, I had a load of stuff going on throughout the year. I was getting married. I had honeymoons. I had various other sort of activities and events that I'd had planned and all that sort of thing. Various holidays and family functions, and if I just had 20 days of holiday, I would never have been able to attend All of those things let going on my own honeymoon. So again, everyone's life is very different and changes throughout different phases of their life. So one year someone's gonna need a lot more holiday, the next year, actually, they might need less, but depending on what's going on at work, actually they may. Knee deep in a project for sort of four or five, six weeks and actually after that, I think actually I need a bit of time off now just to kinda recharge, refresh, kind, reinvigorate, go and do something else bit and then come back ready to go again.

[00:10:42] Luke: So for us, it was all around this idea in this strategy of health and wellbeing and promoting that, and it kind ties in within the numbers that we saw as a result, where after rolling all this stuff out, our sickness rates dropped to about four days per person per year. Now the average in the UK is about 4.1 days. So you can see it's about 10% % of kind of the national average, which showed that actually for us, this promotion of better health and wellbeing practices across the board meant that actually the people were taking fewer sick days, um, a as well.

[00:11:12] Luke: So I think it's all got to be part of that and built out with the right communication. Why we doing this? We're doing this because we want you to be able to choose when you work, how you work to create a great lifestyle for yourself in and outside of work/. And when it goes wrong. I think it's because ultimately, That hasn't been taken into consideration.

[00:11:29] Stephen: Also within the organization that you've got rid of management or got rid of management, mark our, it's, it's flatter than most organizations. Um, and I know Google tried to do that back in about 2002, didn't work out. It came to, I think it was Google Project Oxygen back in 2008 when he tried to find out what created the best leader, but they still had to hold onto that leader. So what way does that work within your organization with no leaders or managers?

[00:11:50] Luke: Yeah, so we took, we took a similar framework to what Henry Stewart talks about in Happy Manifesto, and in that book he talks around this idea that a typical manager has two sets of responsibilities, which are often very different from each other. You've got role A, which is around strategy and future planning and being an expert in that particular field or that discipline. And then you've got role B, which is the people management side, and your ability to motivate, empower, and support other people within that department. And often what you find is that people are promoted based on role A, in terms of how good they are at strategy and how good they are. Sort of competency in that clear, that clear job role rather than how could they are, uh, people management.

[00:12:28] Luke: And that means the ultimate. And then you get to this point where there's, there's stats that say 50% of people don't trust their boss or leave their organization because of their manager and all that type of thing. And you create these unhealthy workplace dynamics where managers and, and their team members just don't seem to get along. And there's not really that sort of cohesion that you want. And so for us, we wanted to avoid that. So we decided to split again those two roles down the middle and have two different responsibilities within the different departments in the areas of the business. So we still needed someone that was gonna be thinking ahead into the future for a department, where are we gonna be going in 12 months time?

[00:13:00] Luke: Because ultimately, if you've got, as an example, five salespeople in a team, You don't want all five people just to be focusing on sales and, and, and constant growth and, and generating revenue. You need someone in that team that's still gonna be thinking, okay, well where are we gonna go in 24 months? It's working at the moment, but what does that look like? What are the insights that are gonna be in, in 12, 18, 24, 36 months? How is this department gonna revolve? So we still need to someone to kind of look at that future plan and that strategic side of things. So we've still got sort of people that do that within the business.

[00:13:31] Luke: And then the people management side is completely separate. So that person no longer has any people responsible as whatsoever. And instead, people pick their own coach, they choose the person they feel is the right person that helps to motivate and empower them, and then they can choose to have conversations with their coach as and when they want to.

[00:13:47] Luke: So obviously there were different challenges that came of that. It's not just the case of right, you can get rid of managers. It's easy because you, well, who then sets someone's salary, who does someone's annual appraisal, who handles promotions. So what, how does that work? So there are all these other sort of gray areas and questions that come about when you don't have a manager. So we've had to kind of come up with our own solutions and ways of working that can kind of fit that type of system, which again, is where it kind of comes back to what I talked to earlier where it's not like a one size fits all. And, and for us we had to think about, well, how will this work if, if this person is setting a salary?

[00:14:17] Luke: So that's how we decide to split it, whereby actually you choose someone that, um, is more motivating and empowering to you and you feel like actually is a, a good person to reflect with and talk with and, and kind of get, get a good sense that you know where you're going in the future.

[00:14:32] Stephen: So that's the number one sort of idea of, of, uh, Google Project Oxygen was to be a good coach for managers, to be coaches rather than to be, um, uh, to be manager. Kinda like that. So you didn't go as far as what, Ricardo, explains in, in Maverick of choosing your own salary where he's allowed his employees to be able to set their own salary. That was a step two to probably too?

[00:14:53] Luke: Well, we getting closer to that in, in some ways. So in terms of salaries, so we have a salary panel in place now. So essentially there was a, a democratically elected salary panel. So everyone on the team chose who they thought should be in a salary panel. Four people, um, sort of picked part of everyone applied for their own salary increase. So we have, um, sort of marketplace research on annual basis so people can see what their job is kind of worth in the greater industry, in the greater sort of digital marketing world. Um, we do sort of automatic inflation increases anyway, but we've got career matrixes in place so people can say, okay, this is what my progression will look like. This is the salary I can with the salary bands in place with the different roles. And then people can apply for a salary increase based on that. So it's not. Setting their own salary, but it is giving people that responsibility to own their career, own where they're going, and then apply for a salary increase that they think they are deserving of and where they should be, rather than being told by a manager, this is what you're gonna get, and then being disappointed with the outcome.

[00:15:50] Stephen: Oh, brilliant. So when it comes to time then for recruitment processes within our recruitment, uh, for roles within Reddico, do you find that because of transparency and lots of people know about what you guys do as an organization and it sounds very favorable, you get a huge number of ta uh, people with great talents turning up to, uh, to become members of your organization?

[00:16:09] Luke: Yeah, we, to be fair, we, we do, yeah, we do end up with quite a good sort of, uh, amount of people applying for roles Reddico, which is, which for us is, is great and kind of is again, one of the reasons we wanna do it. We wanna get the best people in industry working at Reddico. Obviously it always depends on role. Um, but a lot of people now talk about, and I know we might talk about later on in terms of the B Corp movement, um, but a lot of people now talk about B Corp, which we were certified last year as a B Corp, and say, actually, I love the fact that you're B Corp. I didn't realize that digital market could become a B Corp. I love what that stands for, both from a, an employee wellbeing perspective, from environmental perspective, all those types of things. So people look at both the culture we've created and also. Us as a business trying to be a, a force for good. And so that ticks now all the boxes for a lot of people looking at the next sort of place to work.

[00:16:55] Stephen: So I like you've touched on the B Corp cause I was gonna come around to that. But with the B Corp, what, what does it take to become certified?

[00:17:01] Luke: Yeah, so fortunately we were probably in quite a good place when we started going through the process because everything we had rolled out in the previous four or five years, more by luck than judgment, kind of satisfied a lot of the B Corp sort of credentials and, and what they wanted to see, particularly around sort of the employee benefits and perks and things that we included in the handbook and ways that we do pay reviews and training and progression and all that type of thing all bundled in there kind of helped us to kind of get quite a good score to begin with. So we didn't have to do a huge amount of kind of legwork at that period of time.

[00:17:34] Luke: Essentially the B Corp movement is, there's three main pillars to it. So you've got workers is the first one, so it's all around employee wellbeing and the policies and procedures that you've got in place as part of that.

[00:17:43] Luke: The second part of that is around sort of sustainability and the environment in terms of what do you do as a business to kind create a carbon neutral, carbon-free kind work environment? What PR sort practices, again, policies do you have in to support that? What are you doing on regular basis to to work on an environmental credentials?

[00:18:02] Luke: And then the third section is more around kind of the local community. So how are you supporting sort of CSR, sort of donating to charities, volunteering, fundraising, all that type of thing as well. So they're kind of the three main segments.

[00:18:14] Luke: And one of the parts from our initial manifesto back in 2018 was to have more an impact on the local community. So again, more by luck than judgment. We'd already started sort of forming charity committees, working on, on sustainability improvements and, and real projects to help drive that and move things forward in, in that area as well. So when it came to applying or starting the process with the B Corp back in 2021, I believe, um, it was, it was, it was a long process because there's a long backlog of companies waiting to be accredited. So it sort of sat in a verification queue for about 12 months. But fortunately we could get. Good enough score. That meant we were gonna pass very early on, so we just had to wait for that to get over the line. But it just gave us a really good, kind, um, starting point really, that we've been looking at and focusing on it for the last sort of two or three years.

[00:18:59] Stephen: Brilliant. Like I, as a consumer, when I look at the accreditation that companies have, and specifically if they have B Corp, there's an alignment between myself and what, and that organization, I'm more likely to actually, um, uh, communicate with that organization or buy their products with their, within that organization. Henry Stewart's happy or another example of a, of a B Corp organization. I think more than ever, um, people are looking at that from, from, uh, the companies that they, they integrate with or they connect with. The last Guest that I had was, um, Apurva Kothari. He was, um, the CEO of an organization based in India, in Goa called No Nasties as well. And he came from the, he worked in Silicon Valley and uh, while he was working in Silicon Valley and spending his time in the whole tech world as well, he saw that there was 300,000 farmers in India taking, uh, taking their lives. And he said, this is un unbelievable, when he looked deeper into it and he said, well, I can't stand by and not do something about this. So he returned back to India. He set up his company, which is, it's the opposite to a fast fashion company. It's a, it's a, it's a company that really takes care of the farmers. Um, all the product is organic and all that kind of stuff.

[00:20:03] Stephen: And I think we're finding ourselves more aligned to those organizations in the 2000 and twenties now than ever before. And that really matters. Um, and I suppose that feeds into Reddico's, uh, values. So I suppose B Corp and radical values are very much aligned.

[00:20:17] Luke: Yeah, absolutely. So our, our, our whole mission and kind of mantra is about having a positive impact on the lives of our team, our clients, and the community in which we live. So that final part definitely ties in with the values and it's, it's really nice to see so many companies pushing that agenda and that initiative now to become B cor and just become better businesses in themselves. And I think the whole, the whole drive is around using business as a force for good. And that's kinda what, what B Corp kinda uses as their mantra.

[00:20:43] Luke: And, and for us, that ties in that really nicely because we're in a privileged position where we can do things, we can help to drive change. Even if it's only small, we can do our own, own small things to help change lives and, and change our impact on the environment and educate people and, and really push things sort of forward. So for us, it's something that we're really proud to be part of.

[00:21:01] Luke: And obviously I joke about the backlog and taking 12 months over, it's to kind of get over that line, but that only shows just how many businesses are trying to go through that process as well at the moment. And I think more than ever, things like B Corp becoming even more popular, not just for, as you say, businesses trying. Show their credentials and join that type of movement. But for customers and clients and people looking to join organizations or buy from organizations, they're now looking at those types of marks and stamps of approval to almost, like, verify that these are really good businesses to buy from and that I know they are sustainable and, and, and businesses that, that are good for the ,the planet.

[00:21:35] Stephen: Yeah, and it's important that the organizations like the B Corp organization are, have the ability to be able to keep their standards high rather than watering down to accept in more organizations and companies. So how do you actually hold yourself then to, to, to the standards of B Corp?

[00:21:48] Luke: Yeah, so we had the initial kind of audit of the survey. So I think when we go through the process there, for each section of those kind of workers environment, um, and sort of community areas. There's dozens and dozens of questions you can have to go through and then kind of give evidence and verification over the policies, the procedures, the data that you are kind giving them to prove kind of your work in, in these different areas.

[00:22:10] Luke: We had a, a few marks dropped off at when it got through to verification, but we still managed to get, I think 91.3 or something, um, which kind of put us over the 80 point threshold that we needed to become a B Corp, which was great. And then we almost have a, an impact assessment which shows this is what we can then work on going forward. So building into part of our 23, 24 kind of strategy, so the managing director of Reddico has picked out all of these areas that we haven't yet achieved from a B Corp perspective and said, this would be really great if we can start building these into the plans that we're doing over this coming year.

[00:22:43] Luke: So even things that we said, we produced our own gender pay gap report, um, a couple of years ago. So some of it'll be from that in terms of how we can start pushing that forward and, and getting even more momentum on that side of things. Some of it around even more kind of environmental targets or setting our own reduction targets, becoming even more sort of sustainable and, and, and kind of carbon, uh, negative rather than just being sort of carbon neutral. So there's other sort of ways that we continue to do that, and we're just building that into. 

[00:23:11] Luke: So again, and it's, it comes back to that idea around B Corp, about not just being profit focused. So of course, for us as a business, a big goal for the year is to grow revenue and, and to, to bring more people into the company and to hit a various sort of revenue milestone over the course of a 12 month period as any business that is, is obviously one of the goals, but as well as part of that is then, okay, well what can we then adapt and bring in as part of that, that big movement? How can continue building on that? So it's something that now is gonna be part of, I'm really ingrained into kind of the very fabric of the organization to, to really build on and, and continue that that wheel turning

[00:23:45] Stephen: And is do, do you regularly have all hands meetings just to get everybody together to be able to talk about alignment with the company's values? Uh, is that something that you guys regularly do?

[00:23:54] Luke: Uh, yeah. So we, we do sort of quarterly Reddicons, um, where everyone kind of comes together and we go through, The achievements over the last quarter, the plans for the next quarter. We hold breakout sessions on on different topics. And that will often include things around sort of B Corp type questions. It could be around where we can improve next from like a working perspective, what could we, from a charity side of things. We've got people that look after the environmental side of things, we've got the charity side, so they present, they get feedback from people around what they want to see over the next year, how we can continue improving. Do kind of education sessions, so there might be one around single use plastics and the, and the environment team will then put together a presentation and talk around single use plastic waste, that type of thing and give, kind of, really powerful, insightful presentations into stuff really you don't really consider day to day. Um, and really kind of educate the team in that way as well.

[00:24:46] Luke: So we do that kind of every sort of bimonthly once every other month, something like that where there's a presentation and then every quarter we come together as a team and, and just talk about the business and where we're going and, and bring in some level of B Corp good type conversation, if that makes as well.

[00:25:02] Stephen: Do you also have, uh, world Blue Accreditation? I know you had been involved with them for a while. Uh, Tracy, is it Tracy Fenton's, uh, democratic Organization, world Blue. Are you still involved?

[00:25:11] Luke: That's it. Yeah. So, um, we did have it a few years ago, but we haven't, we haven't renewed it for, for a few years now. But we were involved at the time, and again, that was a really great movement that we, we were proud to be part of. Um, in very early stages of that.

[00:25:24] Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. Cuz I know Henry had been involved in, uh, in, in that too as well. Henry Stewart from Happy, uh, as well. And it, it was coming from that idea that, you know, workplaces should be democratic workspaces. Like, you know, I, I think it was, who was it? He was it, Ricardo had even said that. Yeah, you'd send your kids to fight off to war for democracy, but you really struggle to have it within your workspace. So you go to work every day, it wouldn't be there, but you send your kids off to war to go fight for it somewhere else. So whatever, you know, to ensure it was. Yeah. Which is quite interesting cuz um, I think the democratic workspace are the workspaces of the future. Um, and I think you've done a lot of really good work around that.

[00:25:59] Luke: Yeah, we do. We do a lot. So everything tends to be not necessarily by consensus, but we do get the opinion of pretty much everyone on the team when we're looking to roll out things or drive change or introduce new things into the organization. So we use something called the advice process a lot, which is very much why people have got their own roles and responsibilities within the company, but they need to seek advice from kind of key stakeholders. And so in my role within the business, I often see the key stakeholders being absolutely everyone. So I, before I even roll out kind a new initiative or a new project, I'll then often send out a, just a simple Google survey asking people's opinions whether they think this is a good idea, what, how they would do it, anything they want to see from it, and all that type of thing. And then I really, as you say, creates a nice democratic where everyone can feel involved and valued and that their opinions getting heard and counted for.

[00:26:46] Luke: And personally, I think it's the right way of doing things. You can't please everyone, and I think that's an important thing to add as well, in that wherever you roll out, whatever you change, whatever you try and implement, there'll always be someone that maybe isn't quite as keen or doesn't really agree with it, or doesn't really sit as well with them. So you've kind of gotta always find that middle ground where it's safe to try, it's safe for the majority and, and you kind of make sure that whoever it is still feels that they've been heard and listened to and that their opinion, opinion counts.

[00:27:12] Luke: For us it's just getting everyone involved as much as possible. Whether it's sharing the finances of the team, whether it's having those conversations at Reddicons, whether it's kind of pulling together a lot of kind of opinions and comments and, and polls and things like that to help us make better decisions and more informed decisions for us that democratic nature is, is really important.

[00:27:30] Stephen: Great. So you look like you have really, really sort of, um, connected with your employees or you, you really do connect with your employees on a really frequent basis. The one-to-ones, the Reddicons, the other things that you do very well. And I suppose a lot of companies that navigated the last three years from what I've heard on the ground, some of them have really struggled, and maybe the companies weren't aware of it or they just didn't put enough time and effort into it. But the employees. Felt like that they were sort of corks bobbing in the ocean, trying to find their own way through it without any real sort of input from leadership or management, checking in on them as a human or checking in them on how, how, how life is going with them. How did you manage that throughout the three years of, well, specifically the first year and a half to two years where it was really difficult when we were all remote working?

[00:28:10] Luke: Yeah. So, um, I suppose fortunately because we had the policies in place already around kind of remote working, the ability to work where you want in terms of from an operational side, you weren't heavily disrupted. Cause people had the setup, they were able to get on with things at day to day as normal. We made the decision really early on, so within the first couple of weeks that the pandemic really sort of hit in the UK and launched an an all agency weekly meeting. And this was a space where the managing director could give an update to actually everyone in the team on what was going on. And this again ties in with our values about being completely transparent and open. Because transparency is great when things are going really well. But often companies will hide kind of when things aren't working so well. When clients are PAing, when the money's not coming in, they won't, they'll suddenly sort of lose that level of transparency and, and won't kind of share those sort of final details. And so for us, lean heavily on our values meant that we had to be even more transparent.

[00:29:04] Luke: So we set up those meetings. We gave her a running order. Okay, well this is what we're looking like from a revenue perspective. This is what the month aheads looking like. This is what we're doing to combat this. This is where kind of the marketing is going. This is where our sales are, are at the moment. These are the clients that are in, these are kind of actions that we're working on. This is how as a business we're gonna work together and kind of get through this. And again, bringing everyone into that conversation so everyone had real insight into where we were going, the business, what we were gonna do, how we were gonna make it through the next 3, 6, 9 months.

[00:29:33] Luke: We were already sharing kind of the, the company sort of financials anyway. On a monthly basis, we have something called the Reddico Pound, which shows for every pound of money that comes into the organization, this is the amount that, um, is spent across of sales, this is the amount that goes on overheads, this is the amount that's profit, all that type of stuff with clear breakdowns of exactly those line items and what that is and, and how that looks like. So everyone had a really good idea of where we were as a business anyway beforehand. So by being even more open, being even more transparent, people could just. It almost helps to reassure them a little bit as well, that we were aware of what was going on, that things weren't as bad as what they might seem if you weren't aware of, of kinda the details as well. Um, and just again, created a lot of unity. Um, our social team did a really great job over that period of time as well in just getting everyone together on a regular basis online, creating these fun events to sort of keep people going. Obviously everyone was stuck at home, um, with, with kids and, and pets and then whatever throughout, throughout the day. So just getting everyone online as much as possible, having a bit of a laugh, having fun, and just keeping to our values and making sure that whatever happened we honored kind of our ways of working and didn't try to regress to a kind of more traditional framework that we had come from.

[00:30:44] Stephen: So how is that working now? Like you, you're probably still hybrid now at the moment, is, so some people come in and some people work at home. What way does it work? Because you've got a really nice premises down in Tom Bridge.

[00:30:53] Luke: Yeah, we do. Yeah. So we're, um, we're based on a, on a, um, an apple farm in the middle of, um, in middle of the Kent countryside. So it is a really nice office. We have found that ever since everything opened up, the office has become relatively, pretty much a ghost town. Um, there's very few people that go into it, so people have become very comfortable now in terms of working from home. Um, and I'm sort of on the same lines as well, so I might in the office once every two weeks, once a month type of thing, if that. Um, so nowadays people tend to work from home, so we've kind of got that remote work inside of things nailed. And probably in the future we'll be looking just to downsize or completely remove the office entirely and, and use that budget on, on something else that's gonna benefit the team in a different way.

[00:31:35] Luke: Obviously even if you're working from home, there's obviously occasions where actually you probably quite like to be around other people or be in a different type of environment. So I know some people in the team do go to coworking spaces and they may spend five qui a day and go and work in a shared space somewhere just to be around others and get out their home office or dining room table, wherever it's at, they're, they're working from home.

[00:31:55] Luke: So for us, it's, it's still hybrid. You can still do what you want to. Um, and we even introduce kind of a, a working anywhere policy so you could work around the world. So we've now got someone that lives in Canada. We've got someone who's in Spain. We've got people who are traveling and working at the same time. So there's someone currently in Japan and doing some traveling there. We've got someone that's in Portugal. We have someone that's gonna Bali next month, I think for about six weeks or so to work from Bali. Someone went to South America and South America working at the same time. So for us it's just about how can we create great experiences, and great memories of people to be able to, to work and get their salary, but also have an amazing life at the don't travel and work. So we give people best of both worlds.

[00:32:39] Stephen: This reminds me of a number of years ago, I was walking across Spain, I was a number of years ago, and I met two Mexican guys, and, uh, they were programmers, uh, from Mexico City. And they, uh, were walking from the south of Spain all the way up to the north of Spain, they were. And I met them at the, at the north of Spain where I was walking across it. And, uh, yeah, that's what exactly what they were. Do a couple of hours of programming every morning, do some in the evening, but most of the day. But then we spent walking so they got a chance to be able to travel to Spain, do what they wanted to be able to do and get work done at the same time, which is the first time I'd ever seen or witnessed this. And I thought it was incredible. So your 

[00:33:10] Stephen: company is very similar?

[00:33:11] Luke: Yeah. And it's, for us, it's all around output, ultimately, it's, well, what is, what's your client success like? What are those scores? How, how successful are the campaigns that people are working on? What does, what does that look like? What are the 360, um, feedback saying? So what impact are you having on the rest of your team? So we have all these other mes in place to kind measure how, the output of someone and whether or not what they're doing is having a positive impact on their job, the Reddico, the team, their clients, all those types of things. Because for us, that's a lot more important than saying, oh, you've worked eight hours each day for the last sort of 30 days. That means that you've done a great job, obviously doesn't.

[00:33:48] Stephen: So do you have actually a budget for people to work remotely? Like if people want to work in co-working spaces, is there a budget in Reddico to be able to support people in that field?

[00:33:54] Luke: Uh, yeah. So, um, people can sort let us know if that's something they're interested in and they get a budget to, to hand to be able to manage that as they want to. Typically, a lot of our budgets are very flexible as well, so people just go and spend what they need to. So an example of that is with like the work from home budget. If people need to buy a new monitor or they need a keyboard or a mouse pad for their wrist, whatever that might be, they can just go and spend money as if it was their own online and, and kind of buy something for, for that purpose. And the same thing when it comes to training. So people can go ahead and, and just book a course or a conference, whatever that might be, with this whole idea is spending money as if it was your own. So we have that kind of built into the framework as well.

[00:34:32] Luke: So one of our values is that we started trust. So everything that we try to do is about putting trust first in people and believing the best in people. Believing that people will do the right thing. And so for us, by having these open budgets means that we're trusting people to, to use them the right way.

[00:34:47] Stephen: So how, how's that feed then on to say, so the um, when you're recruiting people are the onboarding process, cuz I know, uh, PropellerNet, uh, who are based in Brighton used to share their values with anybody who was on the interview process or whatever, you know, and they'd send them out and they said they'd actually bring the people then, if they had got through the interview process, they'd bring them, uh, to a few of the social events just before, um, they started with the company to get a feel for what the other people were like, uh, within the organization and, and get a feel like they were involved. Uh, what's your process there? Or do you have anything similar?

[00:35:17] Luke: Yeah so we don't, um, we don't kind of bring them in and onto any social events, but we do have a culture-based interview, which, um, for us is around not necessarily trying to scare someone, someone away, but almost explaining to people. There's a series of videos that someone will watch before the interview and it'll kind of go through some of the processes and policies that we have at Reddico. So this is how things work. Obviously that's great, but it's not easy all the time. Like any business, if you, if you have to be self-managing, there's requirements that come with that. There is some level of pressure and expectation and being able to be organized and being able to manage yourself and all those types of things, and that's not necessarily right for everyone. Some people may want to have like a co line management structure where they're told what to do, when to do it and all that type of thing and, and if that's the case, that's fine. It just means that Reddico probably isn't the right place for them.

[00:36:03] Luke: So our culture-based interview is very much a case of sharing a lot of that knowledge around what Reddico is innocent and, and how things work, and making sure that people know what they're gonna expect when they come in. Obviously we talk around the great perks and the great benefits that we've got in place as well, and I want sell Reddico as, as this good place to work as well, but being really brutally honest and saying, look, it's not right for everyone. It might not be right for you. Just this is, this is kind of how that looks.

[00:36:27] Luke: And then we also talk around really how honest and open someone can be in their interview as well. We go through these, this model where it talks around, um, sort of working styles and kind of, what you, how well you work under, under stress, under pressure, and kind of, what personality you might exhibit at any given point in time. And this isn't to say that you need to be a particular personality type or have a particular working style to work at Reddico, but we then want to see how open and honest someone can be around that. So the challenges that they face as part of that, the types of people that they work really well with or the types of people they don't work well with. And there's no right or wrong answer, but for us it's about, well how open can they be about that? How honest they're gonna be? How, how, how much vulnerability are they gonna show? Because when they join Reddico, we expect people to again, be able. Show that vulnerability to be really open, be really honest. We have to talk to the team and kind of work together to kind of build on, on that side of things.

[00:37:19] Luke: So we have a culture interview panel who kind of then that person. It could be four or five people on the call, and we'll go through Reddico as a business and, and obviously ask questions to them. They'll ask questions to us. So it's a nice two-way thing. And also talk around this type of working style and, and, and have a really open, honest conversation so we can just get a sense of is this person gonna fit into the culture that we've created?

[00:37:41] Stephen: I remember years ago, I think it was one of the Happy Workplaces London conferences, 2014, I think it was. It was in Google, in the Google offices based in London, which is really interesting because the head of HR I think at the time was talking and somebody had asked a question. He, uh, they said with all these sort of perks and benefits and the things that you talk about, the food and everything else that comes with the organization, what are attendance rates like? And she said, do you want me to be honest? And he said, yeah, yeah. So we, we don't know. Cause we, we don't monitor that at all. Actually, our biggest problem she said was the fact that it's such a good place to work here that we have to stop people from coming to work when they're ill or when they're sick or because, you know, coming here is always gonna be better than possibly where they live at the moment cuz all the perks and benefits that we provide. And it, it created such a good workspace that like, you know, their, probably their home life didn't feel as good as, uh, uh, as where they worked with inside of, of Google. I wonder how different that is within Google now at the moment, or what way they've navigated the last three years.

[00:38:39] Stephen: So, so what's the next steps for, for Reddico? I suppose you've navigated the last three difficult years. You've come out the other side when pro possibly that's gonna test resilience of any organization. 

[00:38:50] Luke: Yeah, so the, the big challenge now is just growth. So we were acquired actually about 18 months ago by another organization who owned. Um, sort of 10, 11, 11 other agencies around the UK and around the world. And one of the things that, obviously instantly there's always alarm bells of, okay, well how much is gonna change in your organization once you're required? But one of the things that drew them to Reddico, obviously revenue, profits, key one for any business gonna be bought out. But one of the other things was the culture that we created in the progressive way that we work. And they saw that as a real future of work and a way of working.

[00:39:24] Luke: So really early on we had a presentation with all the other agencies to share what we do and how we do it, and the results we've seen and the challenges that we've gone through cause of that and, and where we're as a business to start inspiring these other agencies.

[00:39:36] Luke: So one part of, of the next, sort of few years is around how much more of an impact can we have on these other 10, 11 agencies and even more that grow. So as a group, They're looking to grow over the next sort of five years, from 600 to 2000 people, both through acquisitions and through natural growth within the current agencies as well. So that'll be a, a big chance of Reddico to impact other sort of organizations. And the group itself wants to become B Corp as well. So obviously, Reddico is the first agency in the group to become a B Corp. They really want the, the group itself to become a B Corp. So we'll be helping that transition and getting in place, all the frameworks and the policies there to, to grow that wider group, which would be really good to see. 

[00:40:14] Luke: And then obviously for us as a business, as an indi individual perspective is just our own growth. So at the moment, we're around the 40 people mark, so we're looking to get to 80 over the next four years or so. So again, not a huge number, but doubling in size. And of course that results in its own challenges because what works really well at 15, 20 people may not work so well at 80 people. So we need to really revisit everything that we do and not to a case of we're gonna strip it all back and start again and, and go back to our old ways of working. But just refine some of the policies, make sure that it's fit for purpose, see if we need to adapt anything, see if we need to grow anything, see if we need to change any of our ways of working and, and kind of make sure that it is futureproof for freight people so that we can continue having the, the great culture, the great impact that we're having in the way that we want to have it, but it's gonna be just as successful when we've got 80 people rather than just having sort 30 or 40.

[00:41:03] Luke: So they're, the two main things really is how much impact we can have outside of Reddico, both from like a BCO perspective around the world, but also from from a sideshow perspective and all those other agencies there. And then our own individual growth as well. And what that looks like.

[00:41:17] Stephen: I can only think that you guys are gonna be a great impact in those other 10 or 11 companies, uh, within the, uh, the umbrella. Um, and looking at you and the model that you guys have, have created an, and showing that like there is profitability in creating workplaces where people feel good about themselves and where there's transparency and where there's trust, all the things that, the old models of the way we worked years ago, um, were the things that sort of leadership and management would've rallied against. And now we realize that you guys are at the forefront of creating workspaces that are the profitable future of, of work. I love this and, uh, I love what you guys have done, which is absolutely brilliant. I, I wish you all the best, uh, Luke with Reddico and, and your organization and your team, and with the example that you're showing to the rest of us of, of how we can actually do the right thing by, by everybody and everybody wins in this. So, uh, thank you so much for being a part of the Wow at Work podcast today.

[00:42:08] Luke: No worries at all. Thank you for having me, Steven. It's been great to sort of chat through some of those things.

[00:42:11] Stephen: There you go. After that or that conversation, who doesn't want to work for Reddico? Luke has helped, you know, in his role as head of culture, helped to be able to shape an organization where people certainly the best talent would like to come and work. They're at the forefront of, uh, you know, creating an organization with great employee engagement, uh, great sense of values. Who wouldn't wanna work for the organization?

[00:42:35] Stephen: When you think about it, a digital marketing agency, being at the forefront of this is not something that we would've thought about 10, 15 years ago, but it's fantastic to see and it's great to see that they're doing all the great work they do. That was a lovely conversation. So thank you so much Luke, and, uh, continued success with Reddico and all the brilliant things that you do.