We take pride in knowing we're one of the most forward thinking and reliable agencies out there. From customer service standards to delivery timelines and culture, take a look at the key policies we believe make us one of the best UK agencies around.
Whether it’s a people, process, tool or mindset problem that causes something to go wrong, we’re committed to only letting mistakes happen once – we don’t do risky shortcuts.
Because our management team is largely removed from project work, we have the ability to concurrently deliver projects whilst solving problems, improving processes and delivering training as and when the need arises. We’re a brand and business, not a project factory.
New clients and projects are exciting. Really exciting. But we know how easy it is to accidentally take on too much and end up disappointing existing clients.
To avoid giving our clients a negative experience, we don’t take on new projects if it’s going to push us over 90% capacity. This way we can make sure that we’re always ready to support existing clients when they need us the most.
It’s common for other agencies and freelancers to claim to be experts in every type and size of project, regardless of whether they are or not. It’s unethical and causes projects to fail.
We will never do this. We will, however, be upfront about our limitations as a team and whether or not we believe we can do a great job. If we can’t, we’ll try and pass you on to someone in our network who we think is a better fit.
For us to want to work with a new client, we must be confident that we can do a great job, but also we need to have the capacity. We set aside time each week to review new client and project requests to see if we’re in a position to make it a priority now, whether we have to schedule it in for a later date or just say no.
If we don’t believe a project is going to help your business in the way you want it to, we’ll make our recommendations, give advice and turn the work down if needed, because we never want to be responsible for disappointing clients.
It’s painful to watch or hear of “experts” stroking their egos and avoiding blame or criticism by bamboozling their clients with tech speak, jargon and piffle-waffle so meaningless you can’t help but wonder if such words are made up on the spot.
We believe communication and collaboration are the keys to success; the latter being impossible if we’re always speaking in what seems like a foreign language.
So, we banned using jargon in front of clients! If you catch any of us accidentally slipping in the odd jargon term, please do call us out on it!
Unsustainable growth on the agency/freelancer’s side is what causes so many client projects to end in failure. They take on too much work and overwhelm themselves.
That’s not us. All of our planning, systems, decision making and processes are based on what we think the company will need in 6-12 months time. So we don’t hire, we don’t take on new work; we don’t grow unless we know it’s safe to do so.
We don’t want to live in a world that’s too polluted to breathe, a world where even our drinking water is contaminated with micro plastics and where animals going extinct is the norm.
We’ve partnered with Ecologi who enable us to plant and conserve a set number of trees every single month for every employee we have. And yes, 2.5% of our turnover also goes into green projects that help repair the environment we as a species have ruined.
We’re not a company, no. We’re a family. This principle extends to both our team and our clients. We take care of each other and respect that mental health is just as important as physical health.
As an example, we replaced “sick days” with “recovery days”, which can be requested for any rendering someone unable to work, be it a family drama or death, menstrual conditions or just a period of low mental health.
With 45 days of annual leave at full pay, extended summer and Christmas holidays and the ability to raise complaints directly with the CEO anonymously and a guaranteed resolution within two weeks, our people are a happy, hard working bunch!
For every employee at Square One Digital, we invest a set amount per month to neutralise their carbon footprint. On top of this we invest more each month and more with every new project to ensure that we are doing our part to help reverse climate change.