CRAFTING THE MARBLE CULTURE

Culture is key at Marble LDN, and our Culture Club is leading the way. We sat down with Sarah Miller, Culture Club member and PA to our Directors and Shareholders to hear more about why we have the team and how they positively impact our agency and our individual and collective wellbeing.

What I’ve noticed at Marble is that we not only pride ourselves on our unique methods and innovative ideas in the experiential space, we recognise and acknowledge that all of that stems not only from who we are as professionals in the workplace, but who we are outside of it. To us, culture is more than team bonding activities, benefits, pay and personality compatibility, it’s ultimately what drives a business to success and it creates choice for each and everyone one of us.

When creating the culture team, the onus was very much on, “what do you want to see happening? What is important to you and your working environment and in turn your world? What is it we can do internally that will make a wider impact not only to us individuals, but as a team and to our wider communities?”

Aside from improving relationships and partnerships both inside and outside of the business,  Marble’s Culture Club is extremely passionate about our team’s well-being. According to a global study from The McKinsey Health Institute, employees experiencing burnout are six times more likely to report they intend to leave their workplace in the next three to six months. From a business perspective, it’s estimated that the cost of replacing employees ranges from one-half to two times their annual salary, indicating that low-company morale is not only detrimental to the individual but also to the company. 

In 2021, McKinsey also found that almost half of all employees surveyed were “at least somewhat burned out, and that’s likely an underrepresentation of the real number.” 

As someone who has experienced this kind of burnout personally, as a result of feeling disrespected, unappreciated, micro-managed and unsupported at a previous company, I believe there is nothing more debilitating to an individual’s performance and growth, and thus the performance and growth of the company. In my experience, some employers tend to overlook the impact the workplace has on an employee’s mental health. We spend one third of our lives at work, approximately 90,000 hours, so it’s only natural that our experience in the workplace would have such a significant impact on our overall well-being. To ensure our team can access mental health support should they need it, we use Spill, a tool embedded into our company’s Slack which provides therapy sessions, manager mental health training, and regular check-ins.

What I’ve noticed at Marble is a huge contrast to my previous experience when it comes to management style, environment, ethos, and conscious cultural initiatives. We really are leading the way and the results speak for themselves with the long-gevity of staff at Marble. Through our mindful company values, pillars, initiatives and intentional practices, we encourage our team to consciously ‘choose’ – how we communicate with each other, how we want to be seen, how we challenge each other, and how we create, learn and change the game together. 

We all come from different backgrounds and experiences and therefore have different personalities, opinions and ranges of consciousness, however it can sometimes be easy to forget this in the hustle and grind of day-to-day work-life, so we’ve been implementing impactful team initiatives to help us be better together. One of these initiatives is Bring Yourself To Work Day, where each member of our team is encouraged to share more about who they are as an individual – where they’ve come from, cool things they’re interested in, or what traditions they value. This could look like bringing in a native dish, sentimental items, music, dance, customs and games for everyone to try. 

Another initiative we’ve created along these lines at our latest Away Day was How To Work With Me. Aside from our cultural backgrounds and experiences, we recognise that we each have different brains, personalities, and things that can simply make us tick. One of Marble’s Account Manager’s and dedicated Culture Club members, Maryam Samad, created a guide for each team member to consciously complete about how to work with them – things like, how my mind works, how to and how not to communicate with me, what motivates me, how my body works, and how you can help me be better. This tool brings great awareness to how we can best work with each other. Just imagine if all workplaces implemented this tool?! What a different workplace experience it would be. In completing our guides, we can also learn more about our own strengths and processes as individuals. On top of these progressive initiatives, we often carry out a range of other team bonding activities with a higher purpose. Recently, we hit our local canal for a Canal Clean Up Day in conjunction with The Great British Beach Clean week. Not only was this a fun, interactive experience for our team, we contributed to a larger cause which had us feeling good all round! 

As hard as we work, we also love to kick back and just have fun together, which is another core pillar of the Culture Club. How we initiate this ranges from monthly team lunch outings, team away days, Summer and Christmas parties, birthday celebrations, bi-weekly shoutouts, and additional holiday incentives. Despite everything we are already doing, it really is just the beginning for Marble LDN’s Culture Club and our bigger picture mission to create an ethos our team can thrive in, and that other company’s could take-away from.