Dogs and Donuts: The Importance of Company Culture

You may be wondering how Borcz+Dixon achieves such a high level of advertising awesomeness.

We’re gonna let you in on a little secret..

We believe in having fun at work.

Sure, we totally believe that hard work and dedication are REALLY important parts of creating the best work we can, but those aren’t the only ingredients in our advertising cake. If hard work and dedication are the flour and eggs, then collaboration, teamwork, positive attitude, and fun are the butter, baking powder, vanilla, and sugar. All baking metaphors aside, there are a lot of different things that come together to make us a great agency. One little piece of wisdom that we’d like to pass on is this: a happy team is a successful team.

How do we create a successful team?

Dogs.

We have dogs in the office.

I’m kidding… kind of. Dogs aren’t the only thing that helps us create a successful team, but we do have dogs in the office. About once a week, somebody’s furry friend is usually hanging out with us. Pet therapy is great for when things get stressful. Petting dogs makes your blood pressure go down. That’s just science.

Another thing that factors into our success is our open concept office. We’re not all living in a cubical farm, cut off from one another. It really helps us to get to know one another and it fosters collaboration between people and departments. Ideas bounce around all day. Sometimes off-topic chatter breaks out, but we try to keep it to a minimum because hey, we’re working here! (Side note: I think the little breaks in the day for chit chat help prevent burnout. When you’re spending a lot of time concentrating really hard on projects, a little 5 minute conversation can help you return to your work refreshed. Burnout sucks and we try to prevent it as much as humanly possible.)

“What else,” you say? We celebrate birthdays! On your special day, you get the dessert (or other food item) of your choice, a card signed by everyone and we all gather together to sing a terrible rendition of a birthday song. It’s embarrassing for all involved, but it’s also kind of great. It’s a nice break to celebrate each other and another chance to have fun together.

But wait — there’s more! We show we care…with food! There’s almost always something communal to munch on in the office. Cookies, cupcakes, muffins, donuts — oh yes, there will be donuts! We maybe need to work on some healthier choices, but we’ll get there one day. Everyone brings in treats to share occasionally, whether homemade or store bought. It’s a nice way to say, “Hey, I actually don’t hate spending 33% of my life with you.” Some days lunch is even provided at the office or we take a little company trip to a restaurant. Sometimes we have a little Friday afternoon happy hour and of course, there’s a big holiday party at the end of the year. (There’s usually one at the end of the summer too!)

At the end of the day, we believe in people. We believe in finding talented, creative, hardworking people and adding them to our team… and we believe that keeping them with us is what’s best for business. How do you keep good people? Make them happy. How do you keep people happy? By creating an environment that people… don’t hate to be in.

A happy, cohesive team is going to be the most energized, creative, and collaborative and those are all really important things for us as a company. I can only speak for myself, but I’d wager that most of my co-workers would agree with me when I say that I don’t usually really ever find myself having “a case of the Mondays.” Although I love a good weekend, I don’t find myself dreading going into work on Monday mornings. I work with cool people, in a cool place, doing cool work, and I feel pretty fortunate about that.