How Hill Holliday is adapting to a hybrid work environment

The pandemic has brought a lot of uncertainty when it comes to going back to the office, but Boston-based Hill Holliday has come up with a new way of working that it believes will transition it into the future.

The growing agency, which notched seven new wins since the end of 2021 in the healthcare sector alone, has adopted a “wherever and however” work policy and opened a new hybrid-enabled headquarters to accommodate those working from home with new technologies. It’s hired 41 new people and filled four newly created leadership roles. And it’s undertaking its first major rebrand since opening in 1968.

“It's a whole mix of things, it's not one thing,” said Hill Holliday CEO Karen Kaplan. “We're kind of changing everything up at once, which I think is really, really exciting.

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'Wherever and however'

Since the start of the pandemic, Hill Holliday began allowing the 600 staffers in its network to work “wherever and however,” but it wasn’t until this year that it officially implemented the new policy. As part of the program, staffers can work on the west coast or anywhere in the world. It also gives employees the opportunity to choose between being fully remote, hybrid or fully in the office. 

While the opportunity to work outside of Boston—or its New York and Greenville, South Carolina offices—is an option, Kaplan says time zones can be tricky to navigate and if possible she would prefer people to be within driving distance to the offices or within reasonable time zones. But she added:  “We’re letting people figure out what works best for them and meeting them where they are."

"My motto is magnet, not mandate," said Kaplan. "We’re trying to create these opportunities for people to reconnect in the way they want to.”

Right now, 10% to 15% of its staff are fully remote, 15% are fully in the office and the rest are somewhere in between doing a couple days a week in person, according to Kaplan. 

New headquarters

Enabling this new policy is Hill Holliday’s new headquarters opened earlier this year in Boston’s Innovation District. The 50,000- square-foot space is fully equipped with hybrid technology that allows employees to work productively with remote teams. The design takes into account input from employees, who were surveyed by the agency for what they wanted out of a post-pandemic workspace. “Everyone’s priorities just turned upside down,” Kaplan said.

The result is a lower density building with fewer floors, a more open floor plan and a new HVAC system throughout the building. There’s also a brewery on the first floor. 

Meeting rooms are fully equipped with a way to plug in your laptop which appears on the big screen. Employees can set a specific room as a meeting destination on Zoom and by pushing a button when walking into the space, the Zoom call will appear on the screen. There are cameras that move throughout the room, shifting from face to face depending on who's talking.

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“When you're coming into a new space and you have people working from home and people in the office, you want to make it as easy as possible,” said Chris Wallrapp, president of Hill Holliday. “The person at home or wherever they are can tap into that meeting and feel like they can participate organically and not miss anything.”

The new space is also equipped with a bike room, gym and rooftop, and all the furniture—whether chairs, desks or couches—can be moved throughout the space.  

New logo

As a reflection of all the changes, Hill Holliday redesigned its logo, stripping it down to an animation of what looks like dust and particles shaping and reshaping the initials of the agency. The idea, said Hill Holliday Chief Creative Officer Icaro Doria, is to communicate that the agency is “absolutely organic and always moving.”

While the animation is black, the rest of the color palette is full of soft colors such as two shades of light green, lilac, off white and white. The agency also changed the fonts for its website, documents, business cards and more to apoc and klarheit kurrent. 

“It’s the merger of these two things, the organic and reshaping according to what’s happening in the world, but also common elements that you could feel in like a New York boutique hotel,” Doria said. 

While the pandemic is not the sole reason for the agency’s rebrand, it was a factor. “It was about time we did this, even without the pandemic,” said Kaplan, adding: “Anybody that isn’t looking at everything and sort of rethinking everything right now in our business is missing the boat.”

New appointments

The shop is expanding its media, strategy, decision science, creative, production and account management teams with its 41 new hires. That includes Avin Narasimhan, the former chief strategy officer of PHD, who joined in the same role at Hill Holliday in February. 

In addition, the agency has promoted four people from within the company: Kate Ferris was named senior VP engagement and integration, from VP business development; Jay Bess moved to senior talent and belonging manager from account supervisor; Jamie Sundheim shifted to VP of growth from senior VP, account director, and Khushbu Patel to takes on the role of senior analyst, decision science from QA specialist.

The new hires follow an explosive year for the agency, which won Valvoline, BMW Motorrad, Frontier Communications and the seven new brands in its healthcare practice. It recently picked up Seekr Technologies, an internet technology company that launched an AI-powered search platform.