- In business 12 years
- Funding modelBootstrapped
- Team size 9
Wire Media
Wire Media is a user experience design firm with expertise in web accessibility and visual storytelling.
Wire Media profile
How do you maintain flexibility & balance for your team?
We offer, and have always offered a 100% flex schedule. People are free to work when they like provided they don't miss meetings or deadlines, don't hamstring other team members who may be depending on them to deliver something in order to move forward, and the quality of their work is not compromised.
In practice this looks like most people working regular business hours, more or less. And, if they need to take time off to get the dog to the vet, or take care of some personal appointment, or have a nice 3 day weekend, they are free to arrange their schedule to make that happen.
We almost never ask anyone to work nights, weekends, or holidays. And we don't let clients pressure us into doing so. The only exception would be some kind of crisis, like a client website has been totally hacked or something. But this is so rare as to approach 99.9% never.
We're also currently considering experimenting with a 4-day work week, but we're not quite there yet.
In practice this looks like most people working regular business hours, more or less. And, if they need to take time off to get the dog to the vet, or take care of some personal appointment, or have a nice 3 day weekend, they are free to arrange their schedule to make that happen.
We almost never ask anyone to work nights, weekends, or holidays. And we don't let clients pressure us into doing so. The only exception would be some kind of crisis, like a client website has been totally hacked or something. But this is so rare as to approach 99.9% never.
We're also currently considering experimenting with a 4-day work week, but we're not quite there yet.
How do you ensure autonomy and plan for the future?
The leadership team makes the decisions but the entire team is involved in planning and in providing input and feedback to the decision-making process. We want to hear from everyone.
To comment on the DEEP WORK question below:
To comment on the DEEP WORK question below:
- We DO require people to be "present" on Slack if they are "at work" so that, like in the office, if someone needs to ask them something or whatever, they are available and we don't get stuck. That being said, we do encourage people to chunk their time and NOT to respond immediately to posts or pings, and also NOT to allow notifications from Slack (so they have to choose when to go check it instead). The being present online while at work, we've found, also contributes to team members feeling they are part of an actual team, rather then just slogging away all alone at home., and is morale booster. Our "goofing around" slack channel is very popular, for example.
- We don't have written policies about this but I talk about it often (monthly).
Re communication methods: we use both equally and as said above we encourage asynchronous use of Slack when possible. We use Slack, Jira, and Teamwork for our primary modes of communication. It should be notes that sometimes it's critical to have real-time, immediate, back and forth conversations to resolve an issue in a timely manner.
How does your company try to hire people from underrepresented groups and improve the diversity of your team?
We've taken a company-wide DEI training (a year ago) that helped us understand better where and how to find and fight implicit bias, and how to deal with it when we find it. The training also talked about the importance of having diverse voices within any given group. Challenges are how to do this within a very small team. We currently have 9 people who identify as follows: 6 women, 3 men, 1 Asian, 1 Black, 7 white, 1 LGBTQ, 1 learning disability. (obviously some people identify with more than one of these labels).
How do you support your team to grow and improve?
We have a budget for professional education and we encourage people to seek out courses, books, conferences etc.
Perks and benefits
100% flex schedule, 15 days of PTO (no need to explain what you're using it for), 3 additional state-mandated sick leave days, 12 paid Federal holidays (can swap the actual day you take it), plus additional paid time off between Christmas and New Year's. We also encourage "early Fridays" ... if people can get everything done by Thursday or Friday morning, they are free to leave with pay. <--- This is all for salaried employees.
Further reading
https://www.wiremedia.net/about/Â
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