Coverflex came at a time when we were able to give this area a boost, because flexible compensation meets what everyone values most.
The concept of “Brieflex” is original, they joke. The agency, with an office in Lisbon, invented and named a flexible work system based on two essential factors: three days at the office, two - at each employee's choice - from home or wherever they want. In the name of the flexibility of each of the 12 elements that make up the Brief Creatives team, born in 2014 in the middle of the economic crisis, this was the best way to materialise freedom of choice.
“We launched Brief in 2014, and it was always a sustainable growth, while always trying to deliver the best conditions to employees”, explains Diogo Silva, co-founder and CEO of the agency.
The desire to create a creative project that was primarily concerned with the well-being of its employees was a starting point for the foundation of an agency that wants to grow, above all in terms of service quality.
“Being a small team, we are not a startup - and, although our growth is not so quick, it is necessary to guarantee the sustainability of the company and other policies”, he points out, adding: “It has always been our intention to maintain a culture that valued people. Because we are in a competitive market, attracting talent is very difficult. We wanted to encourage a different culture here, to create an agency that has quality and that delivers good work but, at the same time, manages to offer good conditions to those who work here. And it's always a challenge because fiscal policies don't help, political and economic instability doesn't help”, he justifies.
It was also with this flexibility in mind that the concern to adapt the offer of compensation to the personal needs of each employee arose. From this search, focused on hiring the best talent - and the talent most suited to the company's needs -, the idea of offering, in addition to the usual salary, a set of flexible benefits that could be chosen, not attributed, came up.
“Coverflex came at a time when we were able to give this area a boost, because flexible compensation meets what everyone values most”, says Diogo Silva about the opportunity to start using the solution.
The experience, which started with three employees in August 2021, expanded to the entire team in January 2022. All in, with the Wallet experience and all the benefits available on the platform. “We have everything open to see what people want to use”, says Robson Gomes. The solution, say those responsible, fit “like a glove”.
“It seemed so intuitive to us that what we did was pass on all this knowledge to the employees. We never felt the need to follow up with employees on a monthly basis. (...) It is a good product for those who, like us, want to provide better conditions for their employees. The contractual conditions in Portugal are extremely bureaucratic and do not help companies in this”, explains Robson Gomes, co-founder of Brief Creatives.
“Coverflex offers an excellent product in this regard, because the way we can manage benefits - also together with employees - is really flexible. We decided to test and move forward with you.”, adds Diogo Silva, underlining: “We hired Coverflex precisely so that, with the team we have, we achieve the best conditions we can have. We have been growing for eight years, we know that our employees value salary but also other things, and Coverflex shows that this is possible”.
Speaking of the platform, there are two favourite benefits. The most used, say Diogo and Robson, is the Savings and Retirement Plan. The other one? Technology. “We know that there are employees investigating Coverflex Childcare. We are still at the moment of exploring it”, details the company's CEO.
With Coverflex, in addition to increasing flexibility, Brief was able to simplify processes. “We were trying to have other methods, and Coverflex showed up to simplify all of them. If the company is going better, we can design better compensation from the same system,” says Robson. “We gained flexibility with Coverflex. Sometimes the most obvious is the least disclosed”, concludes Diogo.
This story was first published on the Coverflex blog in June 2021.