Building a Culture of High Performance

“But, are they a Dog?”

This is a question we ask ourselves as part of every interview process. At Man Bites Dog, being referred to as a ‘dog’ is a good thing. It means that we believe you’re someone that will think, feel and act in a way that supports our ambitious and supportive company culture.

Our company culture is the glue that binds us together. It’s what makes us different and it runs through the veins of everyone who works at Man Bites Dog. It’s our secret weapon - a competitive advantage that makes us standout from the crowd. Crucially, it has helped create a powerful and enduring impact on the performance and growth of the business. And we’re not alone, 84% of business execs believe that company culture is critical to business success and 60% felt that culture was more important than strategy.

Our powerful culture has not gone unnoticed. We were recently invited by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) to share our journey in creating an award-winning culture - a journey that has resulted in an industry-leading staff retention rate of high performers, and recognition as one of PR Week’s Best Places to Work for six consecutive years.

When it comes to nurturing a high performance and supportive culture, there is no secret formula but there are a few lessons we learnt along the way:

1. Keep It Interesting

Our staff satisfaction survey revealed this to be a key motivator, so we select clients and suppliers carefully. We perform best when we’re tackling complex challenges and pride ourselves on pushing the boundaries of what’s possible – together!

2. Training Cats & Dogs

We attract people from all walks of life and backgrounds, who want to grow and develop. Great things happen when you bring these people together. We like to point people in the right direction so they can create their own path - and in some cases job description - but with a tailored development plan that will give them supported freedom.

3. In Dogs We Trust

Everyone is encouraged to work according to individual preferences. Working from London hubs, home or in our custom-built beach hut meeting rooms, we measure people on outputs. What we give out in trust, we get back in loyalty and results.

4. Better Together

At the heart Man Bites Dog is our “Your Man Bites Dog” philosophy. This permeates everything we do. With a 10% profit share scheme, we expect everyone at all levels and both client-facing and support staff to participate in shaping our values, our goals, our strategy and how we do business.

5. Who Let The Dogs Out

We invest in creating social space to encourage collaboration and balance. We finish at 4pm on a Friday, where people are welcome to slope off if they wish but most stay for cocktail making competitions and the like. We also have a European three-day weekender each year, a time to catch-up and discuss our plans for the future.

We’re only just getting started. We have big plans for our future. So, if you are ambitious and would like to join the pack, we want to hear from you.