Bellmont Partners Named to Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces for 2019

It’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly good day at Bell­mont Part­ners: Our agency has been named one of Inc. magazine’s Best Work­places for 2019, one of just sev­en Min­neso­ta com­pa­nies to make the list.

We’ve been rec­og­nized for our work­place cul­ture before by local out­lets like Min­neso­ta Busi­ness and Mpls./St. Paul Busi­ness Jour­nal, but this is the first nation­al work­place-cul­ture recog­ni­tion we’ve received. As you might expect, it feels pret­ty darn good, most­ly because it’s a high-pro­file rein­force­ment of what we know to be true at our agency – that the deci­sions we make around our cul­ture are bear­ing fruit.

Bell­mont Part­ners is peo­ple focused, peri­od. That means build­ing strong rela­tion­ships with our clients to real­ly under­stand what they and their busi­ness­es need, then doing every­thing pos­si­ble to help them achieve their goals. And that is only pos­si­ble by focus­ing on the Bell­mont Part­ners team.

We’re cel­e­brat­ing our 23^rd anniver­sary this fall, but we real­ly only shift­ed into high gear in 2011, when we plant­ed our flag as a “real agency” by leas­ing office space and start­ing to assem­ble a team beyond the three part­ners. I’m delight­ed with how we’ve built and con­tin­ue to evolve our cul­ture and ben­e­fits since then – I’m talk­ing to you, work-from-wher­ev­er pol­i­cy – but I’m most proud of how our cul­ture impacts our peo­ple, and how that dri­ve and engage­ment impacts our clients and the work we do.

Here are a few things we’ve learned along the way:

Dri­ving excep­tion­al results for clients starts with an excep­tion­al team of peo­ple. Unique perks such as health-and-well­ness stipends are great, but our biggest col­lec­tive pri­or­i­ty is mak­ing sure every employ­ee has a seat at the table and feels sup­port­ed and part of the team. Every­body here knows we have a good thing going, and we’re all grate­ful for it. We treat each oth­er fair­ly and with respect. We assume good inten­tions. We give back to our com­mu­ni­ties. We take our work seri­ous­ly, but we have a lot of fun while we’re doing it. We’re all adults, and we treat each oth­er as such.

Flex­i­bil­i­ty is impor­tant. When we opened our first office in the far-flung sub­urbs, we start­ed let­ting peo­ple work from wher­ev­er it made sense – why waste hours creep­ing through traf­fic dur­ing fre­quent bliz­zards? And even since we moved to a much more cen­tral loca­tion five years ago, we’ve kept flex­i­bil­i­ty as a pri­or­i­ty. Peo­ple can work from home, a client’s office, a cof­fee shop or a co-work­ing space, as long as they get the work done. We stay tight­ly con­nect­ed through tech­nol­o­gy (we pro­vide a home-office stipend to ensure peo­ple have what they need to be effec­tive) and make sure to gath­er when it’s impor­tant to meet in person.

Our approach deliv­ers greater longevi­ty. Since peo­ple like it here, they don’t tend to leave. We don’t have a high turnover rate – the aver­age tenure of Bell­mont Part­ners team mem­bers is 6.5 years. That longevi­ty, cou­pled with ongo­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­tin­ue learn­ing and apply­ing new skills and think­ing to client work, is a win­ning com­bi­na­tion. It allows us to pro­vide more con­sis­ten­cy and sta­bil­i­ty for our clients, offer­ing increased insti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge and indus­try exper­tise, while keep­ing our skills, think­ing and prob­lem-solv­ing approach­es fresh and innovative.

It’s impor­tant to choose peo­ple over prof­its. We look at each deci­sion we make through the peo­ple lens. Have we sac­ri­ficed high­er prof­itabil­i­ty for the abil­i­ty to be flex­i­ble and respond to what our team mem­bers need? Sure. But it has paid div­i­dends over and over again, and it’s some­thing we wouldn’t change for any­thing. We rec­og­nize that some­times we need to be with our fam­i­lies, to pur­sue our pas­sions or to grieve. And when we do, the rest of us are here to step in to take care of what needs to be done. Hap­py, healthy indi­vid­u­als make a stronger team.

We’re extreme­ly proud of this recog­ni­tion and grate­ful to our amaz­ing team and clients. Thank you to every­body who’s played a role in help­ing our agency get here – we’re look­ing for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to improve on what we’ve built for many years to come.