From Vision to Victory: How to create an Award-Winning Culture in Your Agency

We are thrilled to announce our Silver win for Best Culture at the European Agency Awards 2023! So we wanted to take the time to really show you just what Verve is all about – a collective of 117 innovative minds connecting people, brands, and culture through creative storytelling. We’re not just an agency; we’re an Experience Agency that’s all about making a meaningful impact. Join us as we unwrap the secrets behind our award-winning culture.

Verve has 3 offices; Headquartered in Dublin (96) London (18) & Amsterdam (3). We are 32 years young having grown from small activations from the boot of our founder’s car, to global events and experiences working with over half of the world’s top 10 best brands.

We have a traditional agency structure with shared Creative, Finance and Digital and Social teams across all 3 territories. In Dublin the structure is made up of ‘pods’ of expertise across Events, Activations, Creative Production & Sponsorship with London splitting all their producers across Sponsorships and Events. We pride ourselves on being agile around the needs of our clients, to be able to deliver on any project, at any time.

Our Values:

At Verve we have 4 key values that are the red thread through everything we do, why we do it and how we do it.

At Verve we listen to our people and their motivations, and we are committed to investing in staff initiatives. Well-being is top of our agenda to ensure our very passionate and 100%-in teams stay mentally and physically healthy. 

Our commitment to maintaining our strong culture begins in our recruitment process, and follows through the first day. Our new employees are introduced to their Verve colleagues via a series of fun questions hosted on our HR platform, Bamboo HR, which allows their own personalities to shine through from Day 1.

The Rising Stars framework offers our people a clear development process and promotion structure, guiding everyone on a clear pathway to achieving their goals. Employees are driven to grow within our business, retaining key client knowledge and relationships.  Every team member has a line manager to support their growth and development in Verve. Additionally our Learning & Development scheme offers everyone the opportunity to undertake training that will help enhance or develop their skills. 

We care about our team and have an abundance of love and support in place, we are all human and Verve never forgets that.

Employee support includes:

• DEI policy 
• Health Insurance & Pension Contributions
• WFH policy
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Great Annual Leave and ToiL policy in addition to paid company days
• EAP & 24/7 access to Mental Health support
• Monthly mobile phone bill paid
• Travel support &  Season Ticket Loan Scheme
• Buddy system 
• A Loyalty Month Incentive after three years in Verve
• To recognise the hard work and long hours our industry requires, we introduced Summer Fridays
• Frequent and exciting socials activities
• Free pilates and gym classes

Charity support includes:

• Verve match charity work funding from employees; recent support for Movember and London Marathon
• In the last year, Verve employees have donated more than 3,000 hours of their time to our charity partners and initiatives as well as raising over €20,000.
• St Catherine’s Special School Playground build & refurbishment investing a further €15k in 2023
• Verve support Run in the Dark with volunteers from the Dublin & London team each year ensuring this great event can still happen
• In late 2022 Verve collated an internal team to drive our CSR initiatives
• Our internship & work experience programme that runs in conjunction with local diversity & inclusion partners

Inspiration and Innovation are encouraged through:

• Our #inspiration Slack channel
• Our Regular Lunch and Learn Sessions with employees, key brands and vendors e.g: Snapchat
• New business rewards – all-team vouchers as prizes if we secure new clients (the incentive is based on team work and not individual success)

We have seen a hugely positive impact from agency initiatives and incentives at Verve – they have enabled us to retain 83% of our workforce for the period between 1st July 2022 to 30th June 2023, which is a huge increase of +9% from the same period the previous year.

Our Agency 2023 Q1 pulse survey results showed an average positive score of 88.2% across five questions, which included an impressive 98.5% positive result to the question ‘I am proud to work in Verve’.

We have proudly promoted 31 colleagues in the last 12 months and welcomed 50 New Starters. This helps us understand that our development and loyalty initiatives are not just working but a big success, and that we are the employer of choice in the Live Events industry.

In a record year for entries not one but two of our Dublin team were awarded the Rising Star Awards at the APMCs in April where Verve scooped up 13 Campaign Awards – an award for every nomination! Verve works hard to ensure our talent is recognised and rewarded for their hard work.

Verve’s culture is unique as it has developed organically from the people within the agency. Our 18-person strong senior management team has a combined service to Verve of 187 years with an average of 11.7 years of service each. 50% of our Senior Management Team are female, with our women also making up 65% of the overall workforce.

We give space for our employees to show up as themselves and our structure is built to ensure voices of all levels are heard and feel empowered within their roles. Through a clear development process we ensure our employees feel supported and valued. Our culture is strong as it embodies the people within it. We are so proud of who Verve are and all of the people who make it.

At Verve we support each other wholeheartedly and we celebrate our successes together. We are 100% in and give 100%, because we love what we do and who we do it for; for our agency, for our clients, for each other and for ourselves. As an agency we also listen to our staff and have built our incentives around their needs and asks, our impressive retention is proof of this.

We are a collective of people first and foremost and this is the heart of our culture. We believe that through our talent, personalities and passions we have all been able to achieve a common goal of making Verve a glowing success.

We are 100% in, 100% about our people & 100% authentically and unapologetically Verve.