At Elite SEM, employees can work where they want, when they want. They can telecommute from a city where the digital marketing firm doesn't have an office, or start their workday at 11 a.m., or take as much vacation as they need. In fact, out of 510 employees, about 130 work remotely.

The company was founded in 2004 with the conviction that "agencies were doing it all wrong" and that giving employees more flexibility was the answer, says President Zach Morrison. "Most agencies are client-first. We believe in being people-first—they deliver for clients, which delivers the overall success of an organization."

Marketing Director Jane Serra, for example, moved from New York to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where she works from home several days a week and also goes into the office there. CMO Dalton Dorné was hired in Charlottesville, Virginia, where there is no office; she appreciated how she was made to feel welcome as a remote employee, like the office-in-a-box delivered to her home that included a laptop, two external monitors, and a wireless keyboard and mouse. There's also a monthly stipend for high-speed internet and snacks.

Elite SEM, an integrated digital marketing firm, tries to foster a sense of empowerment and encourages staff to take an entrepreneurial approach to problem-solving. Employees in Los Angeles and Philadelphia, for example, approached human resources with ideas to boost diversity; staffers then took ownership of the project, including recruiting more at diverse colleges, with support from HR. The company says about a quarter of its staff is now from a minority or multicultural group.

Most employees are millennials, and the company says its flexible, entrepreneurial culture is what young staffers are looking for. For ambitious workers, the rewards can be big: Compensation is calculated under a complex system largely tied to performance. That means someone who doubles the business they handle can double the paycheck.

The robust benefits package includes 16 weeks of leave for primary caregivers after the birth or adoption of a child (with 100 percent pay) and six weeks of leave at full pay for partners (nonprimary caregivers).

"When I first came here, I was like, 'What kind of name is The Community?'" says Maryam Hosseini, a senior connections strategist at the agency. "Then I realized it really was a community."

The company's commitment to environmentally friendly policies is among the reasons Hosseini likes her job, and others also cite benefits like childcare reimbursement or compensation, and the four months' maternity leave or one month of paternity leave with full pay.

The multicultural agency, where more than 80 percent of the U.S. staffers belong to a minority or multicultural group, also partners with cultural centers, women's support groups and LGBTQ organizations.

Luis Montero, president of The Community—which is part of Publicis Groupe—says the agency prioritizes access to senior leaders and open communication, whether the news is good, bad or ugly.

"We're super collaborative and inclusive, and our culture is no exception," says Montero. "We kind of open-source it. We spend a lot of time understanding who our employees are and what is important to them, but then [we] invite them to help us curate the cultural experience. It gives them co-ownership and results in a culture that's open and reflective of what really matters."

At Wpromote, prospective clients receive a deck declaring, "Perks do not equal culture." It's a core mantra, according to founder and CEO Mike Mothner.

"There's a wild misnomer. Many places with ping-pong tables have a good culture, but ping-pong tables don't make a good culture," he says. "Culture means connectedness, transparency, autonomy."

Wpromote trusts its employees to work from home and not abuse an unlimited vacation days policy, and it embraces transparency by sharing its quarterly board meeting decks with all of its nearly 400 staffers.

Other initiatives, like a performance-based compensation model, regular innovation hours where employees can showcase their work and an in-house charitable effort called Wprovide, help the company stand out in a sea of ping-pong tables.

With its "Unity 2040" initiative, the Interpublic Group of Cos.-owned media agency UM aims to have an employee diversity mix in 2020 that reflects what the U.S. population is projected to be in 2040. It seems to be well on its way: Currently, 55 percent of senior management is female and 25 percent of senior management belongs to a minority or multicultural group.

The agency prioritizes "belonging" says U.S. CEO Lynn Lewis. (They prefer to use this term instead of "inclusion," as it encourages employees to think like a community, says Lewis.) "It's not quota-based. It's not about driving a number. It's about driving an organization and a community that is deeply committed to an understanding of the value of a diverse organization—whether that be gender-based or ethnicity-based or LGBTQ-based. The focus is about ensuring we have an organization that represents every diverse population that we serve."

Kallana Warner, a VP and group partner for portfolio management at the agency, says she feels that commitment.

"I feel like this agency, more than any other place I've worked, is very supporting of diverse groups," says Warner. "I'm a working mother, and I'm also an immigrant from the Caribbean and I'm also black. ... I can look around and see that growth of other diverse groups. I'm not just a token voice. I'm a voice that's actually valued."

Employees also praise leadership for being accessible and transparent about how the company is doing, through regular meetings with upper management, and for an environment where senior leaders don't hide out in their offices and instead make an effort to get to know employees.

The San Francisco-based publisher of health information for consumers practices what it preaches: Each employee is gifted $1,200 annually to spend on their own personal wellness. Perks like that, alongside a value-based company mission to create a stronger, healthier world, are attracting employees to Healthcare Website in droves. In the last 18 months, some 17,000 candidates have applied to the company, according to Jennifer Silver, Healthcare Website's people discovery manager. And many are finding roles—Healthcare Website has doubled its headcount to nearly 300 employees in the last two years. Managers like Silver and Lindsay Putzer, VP of people and culture, are looking for staffers who add to Healthcare Website's culture rather than simply fit in.

"A lot of organizations try to grow, and grow fast, by hiring people who will fit in, which adds homogeneity, and adds to more people like us, but ultimately does not benefit the business in a lot of ways," says Putzer. "We're looking for people with different backgrounds, experiences, demographics and cultures that can help add to the conversation."

The company, not surprisingly, offers a robust health plan. Healthcare Website pays 90 percent of the premium for individuals and 85 percent for dependents, and the same percentages for dental and vision.

Diversity is an unresolved challenge for many ad agencies, but Chacka Marketing seems to have cracked the code.

Founded and owned by CEO Janel Laravie, the Florida shop's managerial staff is split evenly between men and women, and 30 percent of company employees identify as nonwhite. The agency tackles diversity issues head on, such as a recent, companywide conversation on the topic where people shared stories of discrimination they'd faced in jobs and/or in their personal lives, and ways they could help each other be respectful.

"I think it begins with the fact that I'm a female," says Laravie. "There's less predisposition [toward exclusivity] here. To me, diversity is all about not adhering to the norm."

Laravie founded Chacka in 2009 after working at another direct-response agency that had filed for bankruptcy. Its diverse client base was built from word-of-mouth and includes Shutterfly, Avery and Harvard Business Review. Chacka's growth has landed it in the Inc. 5000.

The company's unusually generous benefits includes 100 percent coverage of medical and dental costs for employees and their families. Laravie says she remembers what it was like struggling to get a group plan and believes "everyone should have access to health care."

Everyone also can use the company Uber account for free. "We don't have mass transit in Tampa," she says. "So all of our employees drive to and from work every day. The advertising industry is a partying industry. We like to have our fun, and that often includes alcohol. For me this is just a matter of making sure we're equipped to have fun, but safely."

Chacka also offers an open-ended personal time-off policy, which Laravie sees as an important element of "empowerment and trust." There are limits—such as making sure everything gets done and teams have proper coverage. Says Laravie, "You're giving everybody the opportunity to be responsible and make sure work is done and on time.

Giving people opportunities to grow in their careers is important to Cogent Entertainment Marketing founder and CEO Mark Zablow, and it's why he believes people choose to work there. Many have come from jobs where they felt they could be doing more, he says, but were being held down "by large corporate politics or legislation or just old-school barriers," such as where they went to school or how much experience they have. At Cogent, every person is set up with a mentor inside or outside the company, and Zablow himself mentors students each summer.

The agency, which does influencer, celebrity and event marketing, is 40 percent female (42 percent at the senior management level). It does not actively recruit specific minorities, but it supports and often hires people from Prep for Prep, a New York-based leadership development program that offers students of color access to private-school education.

Benefits include 100 percent coverage for medical and dental for employees and families and unlimited PTO.

Cogent stopped offering what Zablow calls "out of control and wasteful" perks in 2018, such as numerous lunches and gym memberships, focusing instead on individualized opportunities. "We got caught up in all those perks, and we thought it would change how people would feel about the company," says Zablow. "We learned that talk about growth and opportunity meant more than the T-shirts."

Employees are choosing Choozle thanks in large part to benefits like its $65 per paycheck health-and-wellness stipend, which is flexible enough that it can go to massages, gym memberships—even fancy dinners—and 90 percent coverage of health, dental and vision plans for full-time employees.

The 6-year-old company, which provides digital advertising software to agencies for buying ads and recently moved into a new office in Denver, also focuses on hiring employees reflective of the country at large. It currently has 62 employees, up from about 50 last year, and of those, 55 percent are male, 45 percent are female and some 18 percent are minorities.

"It's a challenge finding a diverse staff, and part of it comes in developing a hiring process that isn't one-size-fits-all," says Megan Sullivan-Jenks, Choozle's director of marketing and communications. Some members of its development and engineering team are not college graduates, for instance, but did go through immersive programs before starting their jobs there. It also had two employees hired while they were in the middle of getting their college degrees.

"The more accepting and the more willing to move away from the traditional job description [we can be]," says Sullivan-Jenks, "the more doors we can open up in having a diverse workforce."

"Don't mistreat my people," says Closed Loop CEO Lance Loveday. It is, he adds, his one overriding management philosophy. Loveday says he even drops clients that treat employees badly at the small digital advertising company, as an abusive advertiser can mess with morale. "It's one thing for a company to say it looks out for employees' best interests," says Loveday. "It's another thing entirely to have concrete examples of a company potentially sacrificing revenue, or taking reputational damage, in order make sure employees are treated well."

Loveday runs a shop of 25 people, half of whom are spread out across the country, working remotely. "We hire people that don't require us to keep tabs on them," says Loveday. The company's employees, however, come together at events during the year at its Northern California headquarters and in Austin, Las Vegas and other locales.

Again Interactive President and CEO Glenn Whiting and VP of Marketing Strategy Tim McNamara, who have worked together at various companies since meeting at Ogilvy & Mather more than two decades ago, say the smaller the company, the better.

"We always enjoyed being at places that weren't these huge agencies where you lose your name, become a number," says Whiting. Rather than manage from afar, remaining small means they work directly with clients, which include Panasonic, Pearson Education and The Honest Co.

The company has excellent retention rates, and Whiting says no employees have left in 26 months. Employee satisfaction springs in part, he says, because Again is meticulous about the process to find a good fit, and they value their employees. "It's really about empowering staff and letting them know that we trust them," says Whiting. "[And] they understand because they bring great ideas to the table and ... they can be heard."