Company Culture: The company logo for Pinnacle Promotions (asi/295986) is the letter P, which fittingly represents the distributor’s greatest asset: its people. “It has always been about our people at Pinnacle and that hasn’t changed over the last few years,” says CEO Dave Weintraub. “All of the flexibility and fun doesn’t mean much if you don’t like or trust the people that you work with.”

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Appearances on Best Places to Work

Weintraub highlights the company’s open culture that encourages creativity, experimentation and constant improvement. Employee input gives each team member a stake in the company’s success and, coupled with a path to growth, a sense of empowerment. “If someone has a better way to do something, we want them to come forward and be heard,” says Weintraub, who founded the company with his brother Mitch in 1994. “The best innovations at Pinnacle have all come from employees who work in the business all day long.”

COVID Changes: While a generous PTO policy and remote work two days a week for tenured employees at Pinnacle predated COVID, local employees were expected to be in person most of the time. Currently, employees choose two days a week to come in, with the office physically closed on Fridays. The setup has proved so successful that Pinnacle doesn’t anticipate any changes in the near term. “We also can’t see a time when we’ll be requiring employees to return back at 100%,” says Weintraub, adding that the company has hired employees in other states in the last two years.

A previous five-time member of the Best Places to Work list, Pinnacle has long offered on-site staples such as happy hours, food trucks, dogs in the office and holiday celebrations. In the past two years, the company has had to shift gears and make flexibility and work-life balance a much bigger priority. “If that means cutting out early to go to a kid’s game or sleeping a little later because they were up late with friends the previous night, it’s OK” says Weintraub. An internal chat system, quarterly town halls and employee gift-packs with Pinnacle-branded merchandise keep employees engaged.

Parting Tip: “Make sure to clearly define the job, set out expectations and most importantly, find people that want to do that job,” Weintraub says. “We used to think that we could take anyone and train them to be good. Over the years we’ve learned that just because someone can be good, they have to want to stick around and keep doing it in order to really be valuable.”