Every company talks about culture. Ours walks around the office on four legs, has ginger curls, questionable professional credentials and a name you don’t easily forget.
His name is Alitis.
Alitis is a ginger toy poodle who has been part of Workshop for the past seven years, which officially makes him one of our longest-standing team members and unofficially one of the most important.
He comes to the office every single day, has never requested remote working, has never taken a sick day and has shown an impressive level of commitment to a job nobody remembers hiring him for.
His contribution to marketing remains limited, but his contribution to office life is difficult to measure.
So, what exactly does he do?
The job description has never been properly defined.
Most days, Alitis moves from desk to desk checking on the team, sitting at our feet and making sure nobody works for too long without giving him the appropriate amount of attention.
When he isn’t busy supervising, you’ll usually find him lying somewhere in the middle of the office, waiting patiently, or not so patiently, for someone to stop what they’re doing and play with him, cuddle him or ideally do both.
He is friendly, playful and somehow manages to be everyone’s favourite colleague without ever answering an email, attending a meeting or meeting a deadline.
We try not to take it personally.
He has clients too.
After seven years at Workshop, Alitis has become part of the experience for our clients as well, with many of them asking where he is when they arrive, stopping to say hello or taking selfies with him before they leave.
For someone with no LinkedIn profile, no portfolio and absolutely no interest in networking, he has managed to build a surprisingly strong personal brand.
Naturally, he also has his own place on the Team page of our website, complete with his own photograph alongside the rest of us.
Seven years of daily attendance deserves some recognition.
There is only one problem.
Alitis is a toy poodle, but nobody has managed to communicate this information to Alitis.
As far as he is concerned, he is a Doberman responsible for the security of the entire Workshop office, and our glass storefront provides the perfect observation point for identifying potential threats.
Dogs are threats.
Cats are threats.
Occasionally, people are suspicious too.
Size makes no difference, because Alitis is prepared to take on anyone who passes our window and looks remotely questionable.
From behind the glass, naturally.
His employment package is difficult to beat.
He gets a bath every week, keeps all his vaccinations up to date, enjoys unlimited access to cuddles and playtime and has somehow negotiated complete freedom to walk into any meeting without an invitation.
His long-term career prospects are also looking stronger than everyone else’s because, technically, he is the boss’s heir.
The rest of us are trying to stay on his good side.
But Alitis is more than our office dog.
Somewhere along the way, he became part of Workshop’s culture and part of the everyday life of the people who work here.
We take our work seriously, but we never wanted to build the kind of workplace where being professional means being formal, where people arrive in the morning, sit behind a desk for eight hours and leave without feeling connected to the place or the people around them.
We wanted Workshop to feel human.
A place where people work hard, challenge each other, create great things, laugh, talk, celebrate wins, survive difficult deadlines together and occasionally stop everything because a ginger toy poodle has decided it is time to play.
Because company culture isn’t something you write in a presentation, add to a careers page or print on an office wall.
It is everything that happens in between.
It is the people, the conversations, the inside jokes, the habits, the small traditions and all those everyday moments that slowly turn an office into a place with its own personality.
At Workshop, one of those things happens to have four legs, ginger curls and absolutely no idea how small he is.
Meet Alitis.
Seven years at Workshop, zero marketing qualifications and still, somehow, everyone’s favourite team member.
