Karen Niovitch Davis of Prosek Partners: How Custom Careers and Unique Perks Can Drive Employee Retention and Commercial Success

Employee benefits and perks can help set your compensation package apart and make a real difference in the lives of your workers. In this series, we ask prominent HR and business leaders which benefits and perks have been most successful in their organizations. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Karen Niovitch Davis.

Karen Niovitch Davis is Partner and Chief Human Resources Officer at Prosek Partners. Karen is a seasoned Human Resources professional with 20+ years of experience in the Financial Services sector. Her expertise includes Recruiting, Employee Relations, Performance and Talent Management, Training and Development, and Compensation.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I was a philosophy, politics and law major in college and planned to go to law school. After receiving my acceptances, I decided to defer for one year since I wasn’t 100% sure about my career path and didn’t want to take on the financial responsibility that comes with earning a law degree. I wound up in an executive training program at Saks Fifth Avenue, and while I quickly realized I did not want a career in fashion, I learned two important things about myself: I loved being in the fast-paced, hustle culture of New York City, and I loved building relationships with people. I did some self-exploration and decided to pursue a career in HR rather than go to law school.

I had no relationships in the field. I called numerous headhunters and literally pounded the pavement. One day I walked into a search firm and the recruiter said, “I have the job for you. It’s at Morgan Stanley, but you can’t wear that” (my skirt was a bit too short for Wall Street, having come from the world of fashion!) I went shopping, interviewed, and got an offer to be a recruiting coordinator for the Institutional Equity businesses at Morgan Stanley.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

There are many people I have been fortunate to learn from along the way, but our CEO, Jennifer Prosek, has been the most inspirational and certainly has had the most impact on my trajectory. When Jen and I were introduced, neither of us saw it as an obvious fit. Prosek was a small firm, and as she said at the time, I was “too fancy” for what she needed with my decade of experience at Morgan Stanley, among other high-profile roles I had held at financial services firms.

As we continued to talk, Jen asked me what I wanted in my next role, and I told her, “I need to work for someone I respect and someone who understands the critical role of human capital in accelerating an organization.” I had two prior experiences where this was not the case, and I promised myself that I would not walk into that situation again. Little did I know at the time, Jen had literally “written the book” (Army of Entrepreneurs).

As we continued to get to know each other, Jen said, “Karen, you are a business development person in an HR person’s body. You know financial services, which is our client base. Come do the HR thing with me, but you will be able to do so much more.” And here we are today, almost 12 years later. I have been able to contribute not only on the talent side, but also commercially, working alongside my colleagues to bring in and manage clients.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time” - Maya Angelou. I am in the business of understanding people, and while I certainly believe in second chances, I also think that character doesn’t change.

Thinking back on your own career, what would you tell your younger self?

Think before you react, especially as it relates to career disappointment. I will never forget the moment I didn’t get the promotion that I felt I deserved, and I wish I had reacted less emotionally. While everything worked out the way it was supposed to longer term, that moment could have been handled better. I also believe that how you handle disappointment says far more about you than how you handle success.

Let’s now move to the central part of our interview. What are your five most successful employee benefits and perks?

1. Custom Careers: At Prosek Partners, we offer each of our employees the opportunity to create their own career path. All employees have an ally working with them on their personal career journey to make sure they are developing a variety of skills and interests and seeking out new challenges and paths for growth. At a more junior level, employees are given multiple levels of support. In addition to a traditional career manager, junior employees work alongside a “mentor” to provide them with guidance and advice as they navigate their new career and a “media buddy” to teach them the ins and outs of the media relations landscape.
2. Commission for Life: At Prosek we encourage everyone to think like an entrepreneur and have an ownership mentality about the business. To that end, we offer a commission for life program, in which anyone who brings in a piece of business - from the most junior employee to a partner - gets a percentage of the revenue for as long as we have the client. While we don’t necessarily expect junior employees to bring in clients - and certainly don’t evaluate them on their ability to do so - we do want them to think commercially and recognize that opportunities can be found in unexpected places just by talking to people, whether it’s a cousin, a college roommate or a friend of the family. Our founder and CEO, Jen Prosek, conducts an annual session on business development so everyone develops the confidence and the skills to network effectively.
3. Personal and Professional Development: As a firm, one of our key differentiators is the personal and professional development opportunities that we offer our team. We have robust internal training sessions called Orange Us hosted by senior employees on a wide array of topics to help our team get even smarter in the areas in which our clients work. For our apprentice and intern classes, we host PR bootcamps, designed to teach them the basics of PR, the workplace, and client relations. Most recently, we hosted a company-wide call with professional financial advisors to educate our team on the basics of investing and how to get ahead on their finances.
   On the personal side of things, we have several internal committees centered around volunteering, diversity and inclusion, and culture. All employees are given four hours a month of volunteer time to work at soup kitchens, clean up parks and waterways, or conduct professional development sessions for underprivileged people seeking to enter or re-enter the workforce, among other things. Our Culture Diversity and Belonging Committee organizes regular events including external speaker sessions, internal open forums, and company-wide newsletters that educate our team about holidays and months of celebration from diverse cultures.
4. It’s OK Days: Beyond our traditional paid time off, Prosek offers our employees “It’s OK” days. Intended to be used at the last minute, employees are encouraged to take these days to de-compress, deal with burnout, manage emergencies, etc. During the pandemic, we recognized that our employees were dealing with more stress than ever before, and ultimately chose to double the number of these days available to people to give our team the flexibility they needed to deal with the unprecedented environment. It’s OK days have a no questions asked policy, and there is no expectation for employees to share details with the company about why they are taking the day.
5. Flexibility at an Office of the Future: The pandemic changed everything about work, including where we do it. Prosek offers employees a ⅔ in office model (2 days in office, 3 days home) with the flexibility to be in the office up to five days a week, if they so desire. To ensure people are excited about coming in, Prosek has strived to create a “better than home” work environment for employees. We recently announced plans to open a brand new, state of the art headquarters in New York City. Amid the unprecedented challenges of the past few years, we wanted to create a special place for our employees that is conducive to productivity and collaboration.

Beyond our new headquarters, Prosek offers employees the option to work from any office globally. On a trip to London? Book a desk at our London office to meet colleagues across the pond. Have a client meeting in Palm Beach, Florida? Feel free to extend your stay and work a few days in the Florida office. We want to offer our employees the flexibility to work wherever they need and develop relationships with colleagues all over the world.

How do you decide which benefits to offer as part of your compensation package?

The most important thing we do at Prosek Partners is listen to our people. Beyond the regular duties of our HR team, Prosek also has an Employee Experience Team. As a part of our HR function, this group engages with employees on a frequent basis to understand what is top of mind for them and the issues they may be dealing with, and to have discussions around what our team could be doing better to improve their employee experience and their lives.

It is also crucial for our HR team to have a strong understanding of what is going on in the industry. To achieve this, we compile a weekly competitor intelligence report that includes details on what other agencies are doing in terms of compensation, perks, benefits, etc. By understanding the industry at large and having an open line of communication with our employees, we are able to understand what our team needs to be happy in the workplace, ultimately driving our retention numbers and employee satisfaction levels.

How do you ensure your team members understand the benefits available to them and utilize them?

As a communications firm, we pride ourselves on having a robust internal communications team that stays in close touch with employees on the firm’s current happenings. We have a weekly all hands meeting led by our CEO Jen Prosek where we discuss the state of the agency, new business wins and losses, and any firm wide updates that our employees need to be aware of. In addition to this meeting, we also send out a company-wide weekly newsletter that includes major updates, promotions, upcoming professional development sessions and case studies from recent client successes. We believe that our employees should be able to know anything about the agency, with the only exception being other people’s salaries.

To further improve our communication with employees and emphasize our commitment to transparency, we use an online program called Pluto that allows anyone to anonymously ask questions and submit feedback and concerns. CEO and founder Jen Prosek and I read every submission and determine the best course of action or next steps that need to be addressed.

Beyond our internal communications, we also host annual sessions during 401(k) and healthcare open enrollment periods. At Prosek, we understand how important it is for our employees to plan for their futures and want to provide them comprehensive education on the healthcare and financial benefits that the firm offers.

How do you determine if benefits are successful or not? Could you share a time when you realized that a particular benefit or perk was making a significant difference for your employees?

The “It’s OK Days” I mentioned earlier that we instituted during the pandemic are a good example of this. These days (3 per year) were designed to allow employees to deal with anything that unexpectedly came up in their personal life, no questions asked, and at the last minute. The response was tremendous — our employees felt seen and heard and felt like we truly understood that life is challenging, and we supported them both personally and professionally. The program was so successful we added an additional 3 days, now allowing employees to take up to 6 per year.

What are your top 3 tips for developing a successful benefits and perks program that keeps an org competitive and aids employee well-being and satisfaction?

• Competitor Analysis: As I mentioned before, in the fast moving PR agency world, it’s crucial for my team to have a strong understanding of what our competitors are doing. This allows us to stay up to date and nimble when it comes to evaluating our own internal perks and benefits and determine what is going to drive retention and employee satisfaction.
• Build Trust: HR and PR are people businesses. For my team, it’s important for us to keep an open line of communication with our employees, and it’s one of the things that I think makes Prosek so special. By understanding employee challenges and creating a system for people to take the time they need when they need it, employees can trust that Prosek will be there for them in any situation that life may throw at them.
• Understand Motivations: The only way to truly motivate an individual is to know them personally. By understanding what drives someone, whether that’s new challenges, networking opportunities or the chance to work with some of the biggest names in financial services, you can then create a customized career for each member of your team and give them opportunities that are customized to their own personal interests and goals.

In your opinion, what are the most undervalued or overlooked benefits or perks that more companies should consider offering?

Many companies can be rigid when it comes to offering opportunities for employee growth, in particular as it relates to working in different locations or transferring to different jobs internally. For example, I often hear about how it can be close to impossible to transfer offices at other firms. We have so many Americans working in London, Brits working in the US, and we have some people who have worked in three different offices in the United States in five years’ time. Many of these people actually joined Prosek because their current company wouldn’t even entertain the conversation. Our view is that the more you see and experience, the more valuable you are.

But that is just one way we enable people to build custom careers by giving them opportunities to learn new skills and work with different types of clients. For example, one of our hedge fund experts may want to try taking on a tech client. Perhaps someone likes travel and wants to raise their hand to work on a cross-border account. Or we may have a media relations expert who wants to take part in a naming project or a crisis management situation. We can fulfill these requests because we work as one agency with one P&L, rather than silo-ed teams that compete against one another for dollars and resources. In this respect, I sometimes think of myself as a professional wish granter. By giving people an open line to communicate with our Employee Experience team about what their goals are, we can help them achieve their aspirations.

Another thing many companies overlook is providing transparency to all employees. Often, people don’t understand how their work drives the business forward until they reach a mid- or senior-level position. We aim to empower people by being overly communicative about how the agency is performing and what is contributing to a good or bad week, month or quarter.

Have you ever had to remove or modify a benefit or perk? If so, could you tell us why and how you handled it?

Our decision and planning process for offering new benefits and perks is long and deliberate. This is because we recognize that as an employer, once we offer our employees something, we don’t want to modify or remove that benefit.

One thing that we have modified is the structure of our bi-annual offsite. Before the pandemic, we gathered employees from all offices in-person for a day of networking, breakout sessions, and guest speakers to discuss the state of the agency and the PR world. When COVID hit in 2020, these events became virtual, and while the structure and content stayed largely the same, we were now able to drive participation to close to 100% across all of our offices. Going virtual also increased the universe of speakers we could secure for the event by not limiting us to those in the New York area. We regularly have top journalists, corporate communications executives and business leaders speak to our team — another example of the professional development that we believe is so critical.

We are very blessed to have some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have a private lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this.

Jeff Probst, Host of ‘Survivor’. The premise of Survivor is to “Outwit, Outplay, Outlast”; the catch is all of the people you have a hand in voting off the island are the same people who get to decide if you have done enough to earn the $1,000,000 prize. Most people would be bitter and not want to give the money to anyone who took away their chance to win, yet the winners are able to garner respect from their former teammates in spite of that. And, as this game play is happening, you learn people’s stories — what made them who they are. The combination of storytelling, strategy and relationships are what I would love to dig into with Jeff.

How can our readers further follow your work?

Follow me on LinkedIn! I often post articles or thoughts on the importance of culture as the ultimate strategic asset and how to best engage with your employees.

Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!