Look Past the Beer Fridge: 3 Signs a Company Empowers Its Employees

Visualize the best workplace you can imagine.

If you have been following the office perks arms race, you see an open-office plan decked out in quirky memorabilia and bright colors, standing desks, and beanbag chairs. A co-worker’s dog laps water from a bowl in the kitchen, which is fully stocked with beverages, snacks, smoothie bar, and beer tap. Colleagues are sharing laughs before taking off early for a company-sponsored happy hour.

I could be describing the office environment at MediaMath, or any one of the tech companies and startups that have made luxury amenities and perks the norm in an increasingly competitive talent market. While perks are great, they alone don’t mean a company truly empowers employees to succeed.

Great companies are made up of great people, and great people flourish when companies invest in their training, trust, profits, and leadership. When looking for your next job, look past the beer fridge and keep a sharp eye out for these 3 signs of an empowering workplace culture:

1. Professional Development

By now it’s a common refrain: employers and job seekers are divided by a yawning skills gap; and yet, very few employers provide high quality training to empower their own employees. They either don’t think training provides a good return on investment, or they are afraid that better trained workers are susceptible to headhunting. The fact is, employees that are well trained contribute significantly more to a company’s bottom line than employees who do not receive that investment in their professional development.

To address this skills gap, MediaMath created a semi-autonomous business arm to educate, engage, and empower the new generation of marketing professionals, the New Marketing Institute (NMI). NMI regularly offers trainings on topics such as Adobe, Excel, public speaking, and business writing. Additionally, our new hire onboarding program includes an intensive deep dive into the ad tech industry, as well as a 3-part training on our TerminalOne™ Marketing Operating System. Employees are encouraged to seek out trainings that will improve their performance in their current role as well as prepare them for roles they would like to grow into.

2. Employee Autonomy

Do employees take the lead on projects at an early stage? Are they recognized for their successes? Are they encouraged to take high visibility assignments? If so, you are looking at the right place. When employees are given autonomy, and are trusted with important initiatives early on, they are empowered to learn new skills while completing specific accomplishments that they will be able to cite for the rest of their career.

At MediaMath, employee autonomy means empowering employees to identify needs within the company and propose solutions. It means structuring teams and tribes loosely, so that individual members can take ownership of some projects while contributing and providing support on others. Sometimes this can even mean employees writing their own job descriptions.

3. Transparent Leadership

Employees need inspiring leadership that they can trust. Many great, small companies have a flat organizational structure with minimal layers of middle management, enabling senior leaders to be accessible and eager to mentor their team. Accessibility can be for questions, support, or even just a cup of coffee. In larger companies, a more hierarchical structure may develop, but executives can maintain a spirit of transparency and accessibility by sharing high-level strategy, earnings reports, and company goals.

MediaMath may no longer be the small, flat organization it was in its early days, but the leadership team maintains transparency and accessibility by giving updates on every aspect of the business and long term plans in weekly all-hands meetings, which take the form of mini-board meetings. As with the board, executives hold themselves accountable to employees. By being transparent on high-level strategy, acquisitions, and company positioning in the industry, executives give every employee perspective on how their role contributes to the whole.

Have It All

Track down a company that does all of these things and has the espresso machine and Ping-Pong table—so much the better! Just make sure you aren’t giving up true satisfaction in your career for a few cheap perks. Learn more about MediaMath’s culture and opportunities to join our team on our careers page.