Being Invested In Our Community Matters
Every company has a story. That story is made up of a variety of elements, including the usual who, what, when, where and why. While all of those are important, I wanted to take a little time today to talk about the “where” and what that means to our company at PEG. Since our company was founded 10 years ago, we’ve been proud to call the city of Akron, Ohio home. Sure, we do work for clients all over the country (and sometimes all over the world), but we still take great pride in being a part of our city and the downtown Akron community.
In today’s world it’s more and more common to see companies filled with team members working remotely and being split up all over, isolating them from collaboration. Personally, I believe that in a creative industry like ours, it’s important for people to be in one place, bouncing ideas off of each other, actively teaching and learning from their fellow teammates, and sharing in activities as a group. Communicating by sending witty .gifs on Slack can only go so far, though we send plenty of those as well! Since we moved to downtown Akron in 2013, it’s been a priority of ours to not just “exist” downtown, but to be actively invested in the community. We do our best to support events going on in the city, make sure our employees are always in the know with what is happening, and encourage our team to engage and build a bond with the area, so it becomes more than a place they just drive to and from each day. It makes their work experience feel more like home and a place they have a greater comfort with, beyond just their experience in the office.
Being in a downtown environment gives us a distinct advantage from a culture-perspective because we have a huge walkable area right outside our office doors, filled with places our employees can go to eat, post-work happy hours, walk and exercise, and even take in the occasional baseball game or listen to live music outdoors on their lunch break. Those are just things that you don’t get when your team members are all in different places, or together, but in a suburban office park. We also have been fortunate to help our team members become invested in downtown by working on projects where we get to help tell the city’s story.
We’ve been lucky over the years to collaborate with the City of Akron, the Downtown Akron Partnership, the Akron/Summit Convention & Visitors Bureau, Greater Akron Chamber, ArtsNow and the Akron Marathon. All of these organizations do great work helping our community, and by getting to work with them, our team members have also gotten to learn and tell the stories of Akron through their own eyes, and also become aware of many new people, places and things in the area, enhancing their connection to where they work. In the world of business, anything you can do to take advantage of your strengths is essential for success. Being a creative company in a city that we invest in with our work, time and fun allows us to help set ourselves apart. Our passion to be a part of downtown Akron’s resurgence is in our blood at PEG, and is something that will continue to be part of our story for years to come.
