Taking the temperature on ‘workplace wellness’
BY PETER JONES
NEWS EDITOR
Look no further than Jeff Buenrostro’s business card to realize Metric Theory has a different theory on the metrics of doing business.
Ever hear of a chief people officer before?
“Your main job is to listen, to ask the right questions that you don’t know the answers to, and listen to your employees’ responses—and that’s going to guide everything that you do,” Buenrostro told members of the South Metro Denver Chamber on Aug. 9.
The CPO must be doing something right. His digital marketing agency, with offices in Denver, San Francisco and New York, recently made Denver Business Journal’s list of the city’s Best Places to Work, and has received the newspaper’s Workplace Wellness award, as well as an assortment of similar recognition from Advertising Age and Entrepreneur magazines.
“[A healthy office means] everything from providing a space that is mentally challenging to a place that focuses on health and wellness and happiness, but also working on emotional awareness and interpersonal dynamics,” the 30-something CPO said.
To clarify, Metric Theory’s stock and trade is still marketing, not self-help. The firm boasts 85 employees, represents more than 230 clients and is entrusted with spending more than $130 million in web-optimized advertising every year.
Even so, to hear Buenrostro tell it, Metric Theory’s bottom-line success is wedded to its holistic corporate climate, where a wide range of teambuilding exercises and a surprising culture of candor are part and parcel to a win-win vision for success.
“Employees choose to spend the vast majority of their waking hours at work, so I think it’s our responsibility as employers to provide them with an experience that helps them develop and get where they want to grow,” Buenrostro said.
Forget work-life balance, the CPO said. Metric Theory is all about work-life integration, meaning employees are actually encouraged to bring personal baggage to the office. A 12-week program called Engaged Management teaches supervisors how to redirect their workers’ stress, ensuring that the personal kind is recognized and the professional kind is clearly delineated.
“It’s really important for management to understand what lens you’re looking through, but also your co-workers … because that helps you interact more effectively and be more productive,” Buenrostro said.
Professional stress can also be a figment of the employee’s own making, the CPO added.
“What we realize is we’re putting stress on ourselves. It’s not external,” he said. “… We’re in charge of our happiness. We’re in charge of our stress as well.”
The same apparatus, or “check-in circle,” was designed to nip all kinds of interpersonal problems in the bud before the powers that be ever have to even hear about them.
Other benefits include unlimited work-from-home sick leave, a way to prevent further illness in the office by empowering those who should not be there in the first place.
The same workers do not have to hide their external job searches in “sick time” either. When they are open about their desires, the company will negotiate a “social contract” to potentially find a way for the worker to reach their ambitions within the company. If that does not work out, Metric Theory will help the employee find their next “dream.”
“It creates this atmosphere where there’s no reason to lie,” Buenrostro said.
Most of Metric Theory’s workers have not had to get used to the unusual culture. Most are between 22 and 27 and many are holding their first career jobs.
The idea is to hire ambitious “athletes” and set them loose.
“If you provide them with enough support, they will excel—if you hire the right people,” Buenrostro said.
