Start With People: How The Working Assembly Builds Company Culture
Joe Visconti / Interviews Conducted by Joe Visconti & Ibukun Oladejo
What does it mean to build a company culture? What is “meaningful” when it comes to work?
Meaningful work positively contributes to a company’s culture, but like creative labor itself, there is no explicit formula for how either of those things arise in a commercial organization.
So when we had the opportunity to speak to Jolene Delisle, Founder and Head of Creative at The Working Assembly, about starting her own agency and building out a team, these two questions centered our conversation.
In 2017, Jolene found herself pregnant with her first child and not finding full-time agency work life tenable. Earlier that year, she had started moonlighting projects with a small team of creatives similarly looking for an alternative: “I was working full-time during the day for companies and in the evening assembling bespoke creative teams on the side to work on projects directly with clients and early-stage founders. The name ‘Working Assembly’ came from the idea of doing just that—working and assembling.”
“Taking on projects that used specific talent, work style, and past vertical experience led us to a white space that became a guiding principle even at the earliest incarnation of The Working Assembly.” With the accumulation of great output and inevitable team growth, Jolene is adamant about this:
“We identified early on as a mission-purpose company with diversity being a huge driving force of the business. We believe that providing greater access to design and creativity for founders of color and female-owned brands is a huge metric for conversion and growth within their business.”
When we asked Jolene how that distinction has translated into her hiring practice, she confirmed, “I think it's led us to also form a naturally very diverse team. Mirroring our clients, the majority of our team is self identifying women and/or BIPOC.”
Building a team based on their abilities is a given, but the approach The Working Assembly has taken emphasizes a cultural fit that prioritizes and defines the culture. Associate Design Director Chase Body puts it clearly: “I actually work now with more people of color than I ever have in my career. Which is kind of crazy that it's taken so long for me to see that.”
This alignment between the team’s hiring practices and the work itself cannot be overstated: as we spoke with five members of The Working Assembly’s growing team, each mentioned that this intentionality made the company more attractive to them and came full-circle in the relationship to clients.
Designer Tiffany Palacios joined the team in July, as the pandemic’s effects grew in scope. “I've had the interesting experience of not having met or worked in person with a lot of my coworkers. And that aside, I think it says a lot that within these obstacles and within these little boxes we've been put in this past year, I've been able to form some pretty amazing connections with my coworkers. And I think that really speaks highly of Jolene's approach to when she's hiring individuals and when she's choosing specific clients to work for and work on. I'm very grateful for being a part of an agency that is women-owned and minority-owned as well. That's something that is very valuable to me as a Hispanic woman, working on clients that I know that I believe in and clients that I would be more than happy to aid with all the tools and provide a visual world for them to succeed.”
When asked to describe what The Working Assembly is like as a workplace, digital designer Sarah Sprinkle told us, “When I first came to the Working Assembly, it was mainly branding, but I feel like we've expanded so much to other aspects of work like experiential, campaigns and digital, which is now what I've been mostly doing. So I think it's like a really nice blend of different projects while working in an environment that is highly collaborative.”
“We approach new business differently in the sense that we consider our team’s passions and interests when we take on proposals. We don’t necessarily take whatever comes our way,” says Chase, adding, “I find it interesting because we’re working to our collective strengths across genuine interests rather than chasing the client with the greatest potential exposure.”
Approaching the hiring process as a way to reinforce company culture has allowed The Working Assembly to grow throughout what has been an unprecedented year. Diego Barragan, Associate Design Director, put it this way:
“We're trying to implement designer meetings every month. It’s a space for us to talk through the best use of tools or maybe showing work because there's work that we haven't seen someone else show. We're working through this moment like ‘how do we make our culture even greater?’ Because that's actually part of our interview process. Did you vibe with this person? Is this person someone who you enjoy talking to and can learn from regardless of experience level? We want to bring on people who are passionate about design and excited to be here. The culture is something that I do really like here. And I think every day I'm trying to push it, too.”
As any creative recruiter can tell you, getting past the skills and experience of a resume to the person is the challenge for most roles. No creative professional got into their career expecting to leave their personality, identity, or beliefs at the door. Networking has always been a critical part of building company culture and has the benefit of going both ways. Designer Rachel Wilkinson let us in on her network connection to The Working Assembly:
“It's a funny story I laugh about now, but I learned about The Working Assembly through one of our coworkers’ websites I stumbled across. Her name is Sarah Sprinkle (interviewed here). And I thought, Oh, that's a fun name, I wonder what she's like. It was there I discovered The Working Assembly, where she had been working. From there, I applied through both the Working Assembly website and the Working Not Working Job Board. That's how I ultimately got in touch with the team.”
With The Working Assembly now expanded to over 30 full-time team members, the vision for the future has expanded to fully encompass creating more tools to be able to work with marginalized founders and businesses. These include a rolling venture fund and incubator relaunching in the Fall under the new moniker TWA Labs as well as Local Works, an initiative to support NYC small businesses affected by the pandemic and rising real estate prices in the five boroughs with pro bono branding packages. All this to say, the team is laying solid groundwork for the future of how agencies can influence the cultural landscape with their creative output and endeavors, throwing down a gauntlet for other companies to equally step up.
As more companies continue to feel the pressure to actually diversify, Jolene’s motivation for running The Working Assembly should be a clarion call: “I really want to ensure we create an environment where no one ever has to apologize for being different or thinking differently or wanting to bring their own experiences into a conversation.”
