BusinessWeek Logo
The Horn Group

The Horn Group

A 55-person, $9.5 million advertising and public-relations company with offices in Boston, New York, and San Francisco

The Challenge: Generating team spirit among geographically scattered employees.

The Solution: Events and outings coordinated across offices.

How It Works: A culture committee designs activities that encourage interaction among locations. At a bowling night last winter, employees competed against one another while entire offices vied for the best total score. The losers had to send the winner, San Francisco, a gift basket of local goodies. At Halloween, each office had a costume party. Based on photos posted online, employees voted for the best costume—a Bostonian who won $100 for coming as a ceiling fan (that’s a fan of ceilings, not a home appliance).

Cost: Events usually get a $500 budget.

The result: Employees take more initiative to engage with workers in other offices. A junior employee, assigned to draw up a calendar of publications deadlines, contacted her peers in the other offices before beginning. That allowed her to create one centralized calendar for all three offices and to avoid duplicating others’ work. Says her boss, director Jaime Lovejoy: “It happened much faster than it would have otherwise.”