VIVA Creative

2.0

14 Nov 2016

Anonymous employee

Recommend

CEO approval

Business outlook

Pros

There are many talented people working in design, creative, digital, and post-production. There are dedicated, professional staff in live events. There is real goodwill among co-workers. I saw some amazing work created, often under extreme circumstances due to poor management and one-way client relationships. Watching and experiencing the strain that so many good people worked under was both horrible and inspiring at the same time. When it's working well, the environment is open and creative. Sadly, that's not that often. If you're good at taking on new things, you'll get the chance because the place is understaffed or staffed by inexperienced workers. But you can touch a lot of different things, which junior staff would not be able to at a legit agency.

Cons

There are specific individual personalities at play that take a vibrant work atmosphere and make it toxic, which is a real shame. Despite much lip service, nothing changed over time. Life was always secondary to work. It was actually kind of a slap in the face to be told repeatedly that change was coming only to see the same thing happen week after week, year after year. Only a staff revolt led to some soul searching by management. but it was clear they didn't actually care, and only did the things they did to placate employees. Sadly, crocodile tears from management worked on many of the staff who didn't know it isn't normal to work 90 hour weeks or be ground to a pulp while having your job status constantly dangled over your head. "Thank you" emails after 120-hour shifts are actually insulting. There is a sincere problem with arrogance and vindictiveness on the part of upper management. Secrets abound, personal relationships fester, and back biting and outright lying aren't uncommon. Sadly, talent and self-proclaimed genius apparently trump all. While pats on back stay high, blame runs downhill. Every time. Accountability is not at all related to status or pay scale. The staff sees it, but they're too afraid to say anything because there is no outlet for it without retribution. If you have experience in the agency world, you won't last long here because you'll see through the BS quickly. If you're young, look elsewhere if you value seeing friends and family. You will be expected to ignore them for long stretches.

VIVA Creative Response

Thank you for your feedback. We are passionate about creating a welcoming, collaborative, creative, and transparent culture for all employees. I am disappointed to hear that your experience at VIVA didn’t live up to that. We genuinely care about this company, our team, our clients, and our culture. As we grow, we try to preserve the special qualities that make VIVA a fun and creative place to work, while also improving processes and procedures to make working more efficient. We continue to improve in these areas. It’s true that working extra hours is a fact of life in the agency/event marketing world. However, we don’t want employees to experience a negative work/life balance. Over the last few years, we improved operations, traffic, and resource scheduling all in an effort to minimize night and weekend work. In general, feedback has been extremely positive in these areas. We’ve also introduced more great benefits like self-managed PTO, superior health insurance, retirement savings, and an annual professional development credit. Are we perfect? Certainly not. We can always improve. We greatly value feedback from everyone in the company. We believe so heartily in transparent, two-way communication that a few years ago we started using CultureIQ. Through this anonymous feedback software, we receive direct, unvarnished feedback from all employees. This input plays a big role in how we run the company. Through frequent company events and happy hours, plus our annual all-hands meeting and summertime VIVA day celebration, we do make an effort to create a fun and open culture. Thank you for taking the time to post this review. We will look closely at your feedback and your advice to management. Our goal is that time spent at VIVA is remembered as one of the best professional experiences of a lifetime. I’m truly sorry that your experience did not live up to this goal.

Doesn't Have to Be This Way - Anonymous employee VIVA Creative Employee Review

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