Penrod celebrates its fourth birthday this May — four successful years of helping companies, large and small, drive engagement for their business, customers and employees. We couldn’t have done it without our amazing team. Our success comes from the people who work at Penrod and the community that supports us.
Penrod hosts roughly 60 events a year to encourage spontaneous interaction between co-workers and clients, which enables us to achieve exceptional results. Our “work as a team” mentality is apparent in everything we do — we win together and we lose together.
Some events we participate in include: team Lego building competitions, secret Santa, Penrod Thanksgiving, NEWaukee Art Bus, bar crawls, boat cruises with costume contests, tequila tasting, a fashion show, Young Milwaukee Gala, wine tasting, SXSW, Kickball Tournaments, Brewers games and the sponsorship of a summer party series on the Milwaukee Athletic Club rooftop called The Lunar Series presented by Penrod.
We also fund social clubs within the organization including crockpot club, wellness club, “cratfernoon tea” and many more to come.
By pledging to put our people first every day, we clinched the title of 2016’s Best Place to Work for Young Professionals in Wisconsin, an award we are very proud of. Chris Widmayer and Joe Taylor, founders of Penrod, accepted the award at the Bubbler Awards Ceremony and surprised the crowd with their laid back attitude and playful F-bombs.
Developing leaders within Penrod has been a major initiative in the past year. We have implemented process to ensure every employee has access to the founders and leaders.
Quarterly meetings were an addition that made a huge impact this year. Each quarter, we discuss projects, introduce new employees, projections for the next quarter and upcoming events. First we take care of business, then we party! After every quarterly meeting, we celebrate our accomplishments together as a team.
In addition to quarterly meetings, leaders are required to meet with each employee every 90 days. Through 1 on 1 meetings, employees are encouraged to engage with upper management and share their ideas, victories and struggles. Each quarter, upper management takes action on at least one suggestion from the 1 on 1s. Most recently, “Breakfast for 6” was established — 6 employees from different teams meet for breakfast before work to form stronger relationships with each other.
As we reminisce on our fourth year in business, we’d like to sincerely thank all of the people who made it possible — our clients, our employees and our community. Our successes are derived from the individuals that have put faith in us as a company and our amazing employees that put their blood, sweat and tears into the work they do every day. We couldn’t have done it without you! Thank you all so much for a great year.