Bellmont Partners Named to Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces for the Second Year in a Row

We remark sev­er­al times a day (pinch our­selves, even) about how incred­i­bly grate­ful we are to have such a sharp, ded­i­cat­ed group of peo­ple on our team and work­ing tire­less­ly in pur­suit of our clients’ busi­ness goals. We know they’re amaz­ing. We try to make sure they know they’re amaz­ing. This news – that our agency was named to Inc. Magazine’s Best Work­places list for the sec­ond year in a row – is just icing on the prover­bial cake. But it was tough to process the news this year – we received word that we’d made the list in the ear­ly days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nor­mal­ly, this would call for a fun hap­py hour sur­prise or mid-day sweet treat break at the office. This time would have to be dif­fer­ent. Before we could even share the news with our team, we need­ed to ensure that our clients’ needs were being met as the impacts of shut­downs and con­tin­ued busi­ness oper­a­tions chal­lenges unfold­ed. Each day brought unfor­tu­nate news of lay­offs, fur­loughs, busi­ness loss, con­tract paus­es or cash flow issues, jux­ta­posed with some incred­i­bly pos­i­tive update about a quick piv­ot, sup­ply chain adap­ta­tion, new man­u­fac­tur­ing line, or way to assist health­care work­ers on the front lines.

I know it sounds cliché, but some days tru­ly felt like we were rid­ing a roller­coast­er. For­tu­nate­ly, our team has always been a nim­ble one, along for the ride no mat­ter what. And now we need­ed that flex­i­bil­i­ty more than ever. It’s one of our agency core val­ues, and it’s so impor­tant we named one of our con­fer­ence rooms after it. The same flex­i­bil­i­ty that allowed our team to work from wher­ev­er and when­ev­er in the past, allowed us to close our office down a week before the rest of our state went on lock­down. And even before we tran­si­tioned every­one to work­ing from home, we test­ed the waters with a social­ly dis­tanced staff meet­ing where every­one stayed at their desks, com­mu­ni­cat­ing via the com­pa­ny Intranet.

When the shut­downs start­ed becom­ing offi­cial, we quick­ly adapt­ed to hav­ing every­one work­ing remote­ly and imple­ment­ing the use of video con­fer­enc­ing to accom­plish what we often used to do in per­son. We’ve kept excep­tion­al­ly busy help­ing all of our clients nav­i­gate the changes to their orga­ni­za­tions – both inter­nal­ly with their own teams and exter­nal­ly as some of their busi­ness units have quick­ly changed course. And we’ve been doing some of our best work in the wake of the virus outbreak.

And though we miss see­ing every­one in per­son, we’ve had time to adjust to this new nor­mal and spend some time focus­ing on our team’s evolv­ing needs brought about by the impli­ca­tions of the COVID-19 pandemic:

• The need for more face­time meet­ings – we use Zoom more than our con­fer­ence lines now, and have a stand­ing Mon­day check-in dis­cus­sion and a com­plete­ly casu­al Wednes­day after­noon vir­tu­al hap­py hour. They’re some of the high­lights of our week!
• The need for more one-on-one check-ins with team mem­bers. We’re encour­ag­ing all of our super­vi­sors to do them as fre­quent­ly as team mem­bers need them to ensure that every­one has a sound­ing board dur­ing this unique peri­od in our history.
• The need for con­tin­ued learn­ing – as the world learns more about the COVID-19 virus and all the changes it’s going to bring to our way-of-life in the com­ing years, our team has been par­tic­i­pat­ing in vir­tu­al events and webi­na­rs designed to edu­cate us about how to best com­mu­ni­cate the situation.
• The need for fresh ideas or a quick brain­storm to help refine a client’s key mes­sage or think of a new pitch angle to make some­thing res­onate. We’ve been reach­ing out­side of our usu­al client teams for help with ideation more than ever and it’s pay­ing off in a huge way.
• The need for dis­trac­tion from the weight of it all – some­times our team’s GIF shar­ing is off-the-charts hilar­i­ous because that’s just what we need to coun­ter­act the heav­ier moments of all this.

We’ve all grown more than any of us even know in the past few weeks. And the Inc. recog­ni­tion was an impor­tant reminder of why a cul­ture-for­ward envi­ron­ment is so impor­tant – in good times, but espe­cial­ly in bad. We’re hon­ored that our col­leagues feel the way they do about work­ing for Bell­mont Part­ners, and we can’t imag­ine weath­er­ing the COVID storm with­out them.