10 Jul 2023
Talent Retention
TheWave
Retaining talent with surprising benefits.
To be a surfer among surfers. That’s The Wave, the digital agency that combines design and coding to create distinctively unique, easily recognizable, and high-performance digital products. With offices in Catania and Milan, The Wave puts its digital talent, its “surfers,” at the center of every project. It’s different from its competitors because it focuses heavily on the utmost fluidity of processes: designers and developers work side by side to make pixel perfect experiences, always maintaining their commitment to the technical implementation of the product. In other words, The Wave isn’t an agency that only does design, it proposes a project that's completely fluid and is executed exactly as it was presented during the design approval phase.
The Wave + Cosmico 🚀
For people used to riding the waves, Fuerteventura shouldn't come as a big surprise. However, for The Wave's talent it was exactly that. When the five founders of the studio started looking for talent retention activities, they wanted to offer their employees and collaborators a different benefit than usual, one focused on the experience. They were looking for a benefit that’d give people an educational experience as well as encourage personal growth - even introspective growth - through human relationships, both those that could be strengthened and those that could be built from scratch.
That’s why they turned to us, and we sent many of them to one of our villas in Fuerteventura, where we organize Workspaces. They are 10 days immersed in nature, working and living under the same roof. Once the laptops are closed, they engage in different activities together: surfing, skateboarding, cooking, pottery workshops, yoga, and trekking. For The Wave's talent, it was a transformative experience. In Fuerteventura, they worked, but in a different way. They didn't expect that in that week they’d live in a work setting that allowed them to experience authentic emotions, get to know their colleagues who they traveled with better, and form new relationships with people they didn't know before.
We immediately found a strong alignment of identity between us and Cosmico, which is why we chose the Workspace for our talent. When they returned, we gathered feedback from the surfers who participated, asking them if it was worth it. What they told us was incredible: there were no lukewarm answers, everything exceeded their expectations. Since then, we've noticed a different look, a sparkle in the eyes of the people who had gone.
- Marco Reitano, Co-Founder & Managing Director
We wanted this kind of benefit of experiences to distance ourselves from the idea that company benefits must be material. We didn't want to give the typical, traditional awarded vacation where one goes alone, or at most with their partner, which is now something common that each of us can do on our own.
- Simone Guccio, Co-Founder & Design Director
Why we like The Wave
The Wave is a positive example of how to retain talent not only within the company but also within a location that’s been considered marginal, such as Sicily. In addition to being an added value in the Etna Valley ecosystem, The Wave innovatively breaks the rhetoric of Southern Italy's marginality by establishing an attractive hub for young creatives and those beginning their careers without forgetting the importance of expansion and growth. Starting from Catania means enriching that area and retaining value, but it doesn't mean being unable to expand and establish oneself in new markets, as proven by their presence in Milan.
Related
Cosmico s.r.l.Piazza Generale Armando Diaz, 1 Milano
VAT: 11186440969
Paid-up share capital: €50.909,09
REA number MI: 2585976
Tax code and business registration number 11186440969
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