ArtMade Architects

About ArtMade Architects

ArtMade Architects is a medium sized architectural practice based in Surry Hills that specialises in designing childcare centres. 

Bronwyn Shelsher, Studio Manager, was prompted to look into refreshing their employee perk offering by Sherif Saad, ArtMade Architects’ Director. 

Bronwyn says even though ArtMade Architects has a small team, they still consider offering employee perks to be an important part of building a team and a culture.

The challenges

The ArtMade Architects team had an account with the cafe in the same building where employees could put their daily coffees on the company tab. Brownyn wanted to find a replacement for the perk, as employees were becoming complacent. “They were taking it a bit for granted,” she said, “it lead us to thinking, could there be something different we could look at?”

The results

Part of the Artmade Architects culture already included activities like family picnics, holiday celebrations, and team building events. With the addition of Perkbox they are now using certain perks “to create our own mini activities that we possibly wouldn’t have done before.” 

What stood out about Perkbox was “the variety of things that it offered.” Steering the team away from their complacency of just coffees, there are now more perks for during and after work, to use as a team, with friends and family, or individually. 

“We often redeem the voucher for HeyYou as a team and we go and order a lunch down the road, or we will go and get an ice cream from Messina. It creates an outing or a team event, it brings the team together even though it’s just an ice cream or a takeaway lunch, it has a purpose.”

Bronwyn makes good use of the resources she receives from her Perkbox account manager, putting up posters in the office to promote awareness of different perks and increase usage.

With new perks added to the platform weekly, “sometimes I go on in there and I see new things that I didn’t know were there.” 

Big or small, businesses can use employee perks to bring a team together and provide a unique employee experience that staves off complacency. 

It’s hard to take something for granted when there is the feel-good factor of experiencing it with your colleagues!