What's the Company Culture Like at Smartly?

What are some of the growth opportunities available to you and your colleagues? 

We pride ourselves on being a high-mobility organization, which means we aim for 33 percent of the roles that become available to be filled by internal talent. This means we are able to be a growth-led employer where employees can go through various cycles. 

We do not believe in retention alone. It is an idle state where you are inadvertently suggesting the best you can do is hold on to an employee. Instead, through various development programs, stretch projects and an always-on approach to innovation, our intention is to provide a culture which inspires people to do their best work.

Outside of internal mobility, we provide a pretty broad learning and development agenda while also working with external speakers to come in and share their learning journeys. 

How does a focus on growth boost morale? 

We firmly believe that a high-performance growth-led approach was integral to our ability to reshape our whole go-to-market narrative as a company. The world of paid social and advertising has changed a great deal over the last 10 years. We needed to reimagine and renew our platform to connect better with our customers and transform the advertising experience. 

The collaboration and focus on the art of the possible was invigorating for the organization, resulting not only in an upgraded platform but better companywide engagement. It encouraged people to think differently and stretch themselves. That is what adopting a growth mindset as a company can do. It becomes your biggest weapon and enabler in driving positive change for your customers and your people.

From an employee perspective, what advice would you give to employers interested in bolstering their growth opportunities? What are some initiatives that either work well or fall flat?

Be authentic and work from a solid base. You won’t be able to fix everything overnight, but listening to your people and actioning things that make things better makes the culture real.

Initiatives that are grounded in this philosophy will work well. For instance, with our employee voice survey, we decided we were going to be more intentional about how we communicate company strategy — including the frequency, which has had a positive impact in the last six months.

With that, consistency is key and sometimes you have to stay the course. Employees won’t always respond the way you hoped the first time as they wait to see whether the changes are real. Celebrate progress, big or small, and be as inclusive as you can with this as it encourages people to continue to grow. 

Remember the benefit of growing and enabling your own people will often vastly exceed fixating on what you don’t have. Most companies have tremendous talent that wants to do well and make the next step up. We just have to create a culture where it is possible for them to realize their full potential.