Progress Investment Management Reviews

Employee feedback is useful even if, as CEO, I wholeheartedly disagree with their respective assessments – then and now. Frankly, I ignored these comments when they were initially brought to my attention. Then I tried unsuccessfully to post a response several years ago. But if any employees have this point of view, then there’s something in the work culture that we should address. We do welcome all feedback as an opportunity to learn and grow. We’ve spent considerable time and resources over the past ten years to enhance our culture and better engage our team. We’re getting better each successive year. We solicit and listen to employees, and incorporate where possible employee suggestions. We are Values-based and entrepreneurial; we recently led a bottom-up process, where every employee was involved in teams to re-fresh and update our core Company Values. We reward performance by individuals and teams through our annual incentive compensation program (30% of pre-tax profits), as well as offer competitive market-based salaries and benefits. We reward employees who behave as “owners” with a new equity-like profits interest. We have a well-documented and transparent annual process to review and assess each employee for grant of this ownership opportunity. We provide direct feedback to any employee who requests it about how the firm’s partners view them, and ways for them to become more competitive for future consideration. We now have nine employee owners (three added last year through the above annual review) among our 35 employees, and we are 100% employee-owned. We are working hard to create professional development and enhanced learning opportunities for employees despite the fact that we’re a flat, non-hierarchical organization. For example, we recently promoted five professionals – three investment professionals, one accounting and one portfolio operations professional. We had six new hires in 2014. But we’ve had more turnover than we’d like over the past few years – some regrettable, but others not so. Many who have left have gone on to other jobs, for which they would not have been competitive “but for” their Progress experience. Others reflect the Millennial’s attitude toward longevity with any one employer. Still others may have been disenchanted. We’ve used turnover as opportunities to upgrade both talent and culture “fit”. We’ve also improved our on-boarding to better align expectations. To build team camaraderie we celebrate employee birthdays, service anniversaries and achieving critical company performance milestones in monthly all staff meetings. We are transparent about our Company’s financial performance. For fun we have firm-wide outings like an annual Company picnic, seasonal potlucks, participation in city-wide events like the annual J. P. Morgan 5K Corporate Challenge, as well as various firm-wide (voluntary) opportunities for employees to engage in community service. Recent examples are distributing Holiday “Baskets of Love” for San Francisco Tenderloin residents and providing Christmas gifts to San Francisco foster youth. We have a company-sponsored charitable gifts program supporting non-profits in communities, in which we live and do business nationally. We’re expanding this to include a Company match for employee donations to their favorite local charities. Our firm’s essential business is to provide competitive investment returns for institutional investors by identifying and overseeing talented boutique investment firms. Progress is a pioneer and a leading industry firm in our space. Our strategy is to increase MWBE diversity in the investment management industry – an ennobling mission. Our firm is diverse – over half of our employees are women and 85% are ethnic minorities and recent immigrants. So diversity is at the core of everything we do – it’s a Company Value as well as a key differentiating element of our business. We are not perfect – no organization is because we’re comprised of people who by nature are imperfect. But we are committed to building a sustainable organization that can compete globally and provide meaningful work opportunities. We are poised for an even greater future as we celebrate 25 years in business this year. If you are looking for an entrepreneurial place to grow and make a difference, I invite you to check us out and do your own diligence. With gratitude for all who’ve contributed to our past, present and future, Thurman White President and CEO