Pros
Democracy is a medium sized agency in Chorlton Manchester with a family feel. The office is over two floors and it’s on Beech Rd, a busy street with bars and restaurants and walking/running distance to the Ees. I’ve been part of the team there for 4 years and left to pursue a role in a different agency. During my time at the agency I held a few roles and moved around as new clients were won and new teams formed. The agency won a massive account around three years ago (about a year after I started) and they had to grow very quickly. It took time to recruit the right people (and there were a few bad choices along the way) and this created a period of frustration, with people feeling overstretched. Not helped by the head of agency being off on maternity leave - she did come back much earlier than planned to sort things out but it was still too late to alleviate all the added stress. It took a good year or so for everything to settle down and for the new teams to gel, but it was all in a much better place when I left. I had a clear job description, a line manager I could ask for help and a hotline to the boss if there was something I wanted to discuss. Plus they hired a load of really senior bods in strategy, content and social, so loads of new people to learn from. During covid we were already set up to work from home ahead of time and we were given extra money to set up our own workstations. There were a couple of redundancies, but these were more about needing to increase different skillsets within the agency as the work that was coming in had changed. This was a really uncertain time and a few people were upset by the changed and there was some bad feeling. The agency invests a lot in team relationships, there’s socials, awards dos and a team away weekend. It’s always outdoorsy and often involves wetsuits - it’s always a laugh and most people get stuck in. There’s a real focus on learner led training - so on top of the on job training, you’re given time every month to spend on additional training courses that you think will benefit you/the agency/the clients. Competitive salary - and the benefits are good. You always get an annual review but you do have to remind people about things like mentor meetings and regular 121s.
Cons
I think it was harder for the new starters during covid, who didn’t have the benefit of knowing what things were like ‘before’. Every day is started with a review of the major news stories of the day - something that’s fun in person, but can be draining over zoom. Training at Democracy is often ‘on the job’ again, hard to replicate during covid and I think this has left people frustrated. More needs to be done to formalise the training system. Making sure that training time is protected is equally important.