By Angela Blue
2829 Guardian Lane, Suite 100, Virginia Beach | 885-275-2563 | BuzzFranchiseBrands.com
Founded: 2012
Employees: 70 year-round; 30 seasonal
When visiting Buzz Franchise Brands on a Friday afternoon after 4 o’clock, you’re not likely to find a staff glued to their computers. Instead, employees may be gathered together in the café, playing pool or ping pong, cracking open a beer or pouring a glass of wine and chatting with CEO Kevin Wilson about plans for the weekend. “How much work are you really going to get done in the last hour on the last day of the week?” Wilson queries. “I’d rather go out and talk to my team and engage with them in a different way than I might normally engage during the week.”
When considering the company culture at Buzz Franchise Brands (which encompasses Mosquito Joe, Pool Scouts and Home Clean Heroes), Wilson describes it as fun, inclusive, performance-based and putting the employee first. “For many people it doesn’t really feel like work because they enjoy the people they’re around; they enjoy the professional development side of their job and what we’ve created; they enjoy the autonomy that we give them to make decisions.”
Wilson acknowledges that company culture isn’t something that happens naturally but rather a conscious effort. To ensure a positive work environment at Buzz Franchise Brands, Wilson has launched the “Sanity Control Committee,” a team made up of five individuals of different ages and from different departments, who organize a calendar of quarterly lunch-and-learns or monthly outings to places like Topgolf. Sometimes the Committee organizes fun activities within the office, like bringing in a sommelier for a wine tasting or inviting the staff from Smartmouth Brewery to bring some beers over for the team to sample.
For other managers or business owners looking to refresh the employee morale at their own businesses, Wilson says they need to be committed to making it work and shouldn’t be afraid to try something different. The next step is getting employee involvement. “They should know which of their employees are respected and know other people within the company,” he says. “Form a little team, and start off with one fun event a month. You don’t have to start out with everything all at once, but you can build and have a plan. But you’ve got to be committed to it, and you have to truly believe it’s going to make a difference.”
Work Perks
- Quarterly lunch and learns focused on industry education, personal finance, HR, health and wellness, etc.
- Standup desks
- Pool and ping pong table for breaks
- Regular pot luck meals
- Happy hours throughout the year
- Fully stocked kitchen with coffee and chocolate galore
- Celebrations for birthdays, weddings, showers and promotions
- Events like summer barbecues, Oktoberfest brewery crawl, cycle/spin classes
- Ugly sweater contests and holiday cubicle decorating competitions
- Yearly trips to Cancun for franchisee conventions
- Company milestones rewarded with gift cards
- Employee of the month rewarded with a nice dinner for two
Why I Love My Job
“Buzz Franchise Brands provides us with an exceptional work environment from the leadership team to the BFB branding around the office to the fully stocked breakroom and complimentary lunches.”
—Meghan McConville, Marketing Assistant, three years with Buzz Franchise Brands
